Both the U.S. and China framed the Biden-Xi virtual summit of Nov. 16 as a “polite” but “straightforward” exchange on major areas of contention. Yet a comparison of the two sides’ readouts also demonstrates that each has a fundamentally different understanding of their positioning relative to one another.

The Russia-Ukraine crisis and the one-year anniversary of the Capitol insurgency are not directly related. But they both make up parts of a difficult challenge facing U.S. policymakers: how to preserve Washington’s global leadership role at a time when its model of governance is increasingly called into question.