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Over the past few months, Beijing’s increasingly uncompromising posture toward policy disagreements with foreign powers has been reflected in the strident rhetoric used by Chinese officials. The latest round of U.S.-China high-level diplomacy was no exception. But several incidents this week demonstrated how this sharp, aggressive tone on the part of China’s leadership is now also filtering down to the Chinese public on the streets of Zhengzhou and elsewhere across mainland China.
A day before the arrival of U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman in the coastal city of Tianjin, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi had set the tone for the second meeting of high-level diplomats under the new Biden administration by promising to give the U.S. “a tutorial.”