This is John Batchel.

Conversation with my colleague Elizabeth Peake who writes a column for the Hill and from Fox News,

commenting on the Xi-Trump meeting in Beijing, asking what has Xi got to boast about?

What has he got to be aggressive about with regard Taiwan or anything else?

His economy is maybe number two, failing in all instances

in the most recent accounting of its manufacturing output, its industrial output.

In AI, it's clearly trailing, even acknowledges that it's trailing, even though it steals

the best stuff the U.S. has.

And energy, it has no energy resources comparable to the United States.

So what is the boast?

Liz asks.

Here she is.

Thank you.

More of this later.

Well, so my take, everyone has sort of written off the summit between Xi and Trump as a non-win for anybody.

They think it was unproductive. It didn't meet expectations, et cetera, et cetera. And my take is a little different.

Started out, of course, was Xi making bellicose threats about Taiwan? Don't get near Taiwan. You know,

we're going to, we would take that very much, very seriously. It would disrupt our relationship,

et cetera. I think that was totally a smokescreen. The United States has no interest in getting

involved in Taiwan. And I don't think that China has any interest in taking over Taiwan.

Robert Gates just came out in the last day or two and said the same thing. China has their hands full. They're dealing with a lot

of issues inside the country. Why would they basically attack their neighbor where that neighbor is

...