As Xi and Biden Meet, Trump and Uncertainty Loom Large

The two leaders will meet in Peru, where China has steadily expanded its influence in a challenge to the United States in its own region.

President Biden and China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, have sparred for years about how the world should be ordered.

Mr. Biden, who has described Mr. Xi as a “dictator,” has said the preservation of democracy was the “defining challenge of our age.” Mr. Xi has accused the United States of being the “biggest source of chaos” in the world and warned against dangerous Western liberal ideas.

Now, as the two meet as world leaders for probably the last time in Peru on Saturday, it is Mr. Biden’s vision of the world that appears to be in retreat. The U.S. president is exiting the global stage with his stature diminished after Americans voted Donald J. Trump back into power.

Mr. Xi, on the other hand, remains China’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong, unfettered by term limits and surrounded by loyalists. He has blamed China’s economic troubles on American “containment.” He has expanded Beijing’s influence worldwide, including in what the United States considers its own backyard — a point Mr. Xi drove home this week by inaugurating a $3.5 billion Chinese-funded deepwater port at the start of his visit to Peru.

The Biden administration says the president wants to use the meeting in Peru, on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, to challenge Mr. Xi on Chinese hacking, human rights violations and threats against Taiwan. Mr. Xi, who has bristled against being lectured by the West, is unlikely to pay much heed to Mr. Biden — and might see the contrast in their political standing as a vindication of his views.