Winston Churchill, Britain's wartime leader, once said "to jaw-jaw always is better than to war-war". Presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping would agree. On Nov 16, the leaders of the United States and China met virtually for more than three hours at their first face-to-face presidential summit.

While Mr Xi has faced growing external headwinds coming into the summit, he has emerged from the recently concluded 6th plenum in a stronger domestic position. The passing of the party's third-ever "historical" resolution seemingly anoints him as a leader of comparable status to that of Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping.