Blinken, who delivered a tough US message to China in dust-up talks in Alaska in March, was putting colloquial meat on the bones of President Joe Biden's recent warnings that democracy is under threat -- and not only from illiberal trends in the West.
The concept of a new Cold War between the US and China is hardening into conventional wisdom in Washington. One critique however is that the original version was an ideological clash between the capitalists of the West and the communists of the Soviet bloc. The US and China are locked in a more classic duel between a rising power and a declining one -- though Blinken certainly seems to see an ideological component.
