There may have been relief in China's ruling circles when Mr Joe Biden won the presidential election in the United States, even though Beijing took nearly a week to congratulate the President-elect. Chinese netizens certainly celebrated on social media, renaming Beijing's iconic Forbidden City the "For-Biden City". After a four-year roller-coaster ride with President Donald Trump, whose unpredictable foreign policy and confrontational ways regularly pushed the two sides close to conflict, Beijing is preparing for change. So too elsewhere, it would appear, particularly in Europe and Asia where some countries found themselves squeezed uncomfortably as rivalry and tensions between the two powers escalated.
For China, and the rest of the world, Mr Biden's win - which still needs to be formally declared - provides opportunities for a change of course or to reset relations that have hit their lowest point in decades. The worsening of ties between the world's two largest economies has had huge implications bilaterally and for the rest of the world, affecting not just the international response to the Covid-19 pandemic and issues like climate change, but also global peace and stability.
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