I'm John Batchel with Professor Richard Epstein of the Civitas Institute.

We go to Beijing where the crowds have left.

The president has flown home. The Xi Jinping has gone back to the forbidden city. We're standing

outside wondering what's happened these last days. What I've learned is that the president

went there to make trade deals. Xi Jinping was obtuse enough to say, let us avoid the lucidity's trap, which is simply that

the rising power defeats the established power.

It's a way of talking about a formula that works in history except when it doesn't.

However, I want your opinion, Richard, of the president of the United States

going to Beijing and asking for something and not getting it. Is this a mistake by Mr. Trump?

Is this a mistake by Mr. She? Well, Xi himself is in trouble internally. The number of

turnover is generals being fired and so forth is very large. There

is all sorts of talks of an impending credit crisis in China that can't be prompted up by monetary

maneuvers done by the central. So the bad on that, there's a lot of talk that the military is not

particularly happy with the situation that he's trying to take.

There's a lot of talk which says, A, the Chinese army is so much more advanced than ours

that we can't possibly stop.

And B, that the corruption and the construction of tanks and other material means that the army is completely unreliable.

You remember it was Chinese tanks that

Putin used when he invaded Ukraine, and it turns out they were so bad that they could not fan

out as they have to do. So he put them on a single row and they became single job. It's not the

purpose of tanks to shoot each other. It's to shoot the enemy and they managed to do it the other way. So that's a complete uncertainty of what's going on. It's not the purpose of tanks to shoot each other. It's to shoot the enemy, and they manage to do it the other way. So that's a complete uncertainty of what's going on. It's also clear that people on the other side are now understanding that China is dangerous, and they're starting to form alliances they might not have done. And the same thing is happening in Europe, where all of a sudden the people no longer think that we

could trust the United States. So they're forming their own alliances, the same thing in the Middle

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