\u201cIt was a China that did not want to overturn the international system but wanted to be a part of that system and made that very clear. It was a China that wanted a constructive relationship with the United States. And we tried to build that,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hadley and other former Bush administration officials gathered this week to discuss relations with China during the Bush administration, just as China\u2019s leader Xi Jinping was rising to power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dennis Wilder, a senior fellow for the Initiative for U.S.-China Dialogue on Global Issues at Georgetown University, who appeared with Hadley at the event, said the Bush administration “did try to figure out Xi Jinping” during its first meeting with the Chinese leader. Wilder served as the National Security Council’s special assistant to Bush.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhen we went to the 2008 Olympics, Xi Jinping was actually in charge of the Olympics. \u2026 It was one of the most boring meetings I’d ever been in. Xi Jinping gave nothing. He was cardboard. He wasn’t going to tell us a thing about himself. He was not going to show his hand. And this is how he got to the top of the Chinese system. He did hide his cards,\u201d Wilder said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wilder added that many thought Xi Jinping was \u201canother reformist Chinese leader,\u201d but everyone was surprised by him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Xi\u2019s vision<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Xi is enhancing Beijing\u2019s diplomacy, economic strength and military capability, believing the United States is in \u201cterminal decline,\u201d according to Hadley, whose book Hand-Off: The Foreign Policy George W. Bush Passed to Barack Obama<\/em> was published in February.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Xi, Hadley said, views that “the West is in decline” and “the United States is in terminal decline.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Xi was prepared to put his power center stage and then to use it to intimidate his neighbors and others abroad, with his enhanced diplomacy, economic strength and military capability,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n VOA contacted the Chinese Embassy in Washington for comment but received no response. But China\u2019s official media outlets such as the People\u2019s Daily<\/em> and the Global Times<\/em> have published pieces recently discussing various aspects of what is described as America\u2019s decline, according to a collection published by CSIS<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 1978, Deng Xiaoping, who is widely considered the father of modern China, kick-started<\/a> the country\u2019s economic reform that embraces a free-market economy while maintaining the political model of one-party dictatorship. The reform led China to open up to the world economically and politically, achieving double-digit GDP growth rates for over 30 years by becoming the global manufacturing hub. Today, China is the world\u2019s second-biggest economy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hadley said Deng\u2019s \u201chide and bide\u201d strategy, which guides China to build power while hiding from international leadership responsibility, continued to be prominent in the Chinese leadership until Xi came to power in 2012.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"FILE](\"https:\/\/gdb.voanews.com\/01000000-0aff-0242-5563-08db5e2fc07f_cx0_cy24_cw100_w250_r0_s.jpg\")
![\"FILE](\"https:\/\/gdb.voanews.com\/01000000-0aff-0242-13e8-08db29fee9a7_w250_r1_s.jpg\")