Welcome to the commentary magazine Daily Podcast.

Today is Friday, March 19, 2021.

I'm John Pauhrt, the editor of commentary magazine with me as always, executive editor

A Greenwald Hyade.

Hyde John, associate editor Noah Rossman Hyde Noah.

Hyde John.

And senior writer Christine Rosenhyde Christine.

Hyde John.

So yesterday there was this very peculiar meeting in Alaska between Secretary of State

Anthony Blinken and Chinese diplomat Young Juchi that involved the first sort of face-to-face

of senior officials of the two most important countries and most powerful countries in the

world, most the two economic powerhouses of the planet.

And it began with Yang just sort of assaulting the United States for 15 minutes, starting

out with someone else, China State Councilor Wang Yi, who complained that this meeting took

place in the wake of US sanctions against Chinese officials because of, you know, in response

to the crackdown or the sort of the ending of democracy and free speech in Hong Kong

and saying this isn't the way to start a good relationship at which point then his colleague

just Yang just went to town assaulting the United States, which has eerie parallels

by the way to the negotiations with the North Vietnamese in Paris in the early 70s, where

the North Vietnamese would, you know, they were supposed to be having peace talks with

the United States and these would then just sort of devolve into criticism sessions in

which the North Vietnamese would talk about how we mistreated the Indians and stuff like

...