When US Vice President Mike Pence addressed the recent APEC summit, he criticized China for its myriad breaches of international norms. The US and the world have lost patience, he said, adding: “Things must change.”
He spoke these words 51 years after then-US president Richard Nixon issued the first urgent “China must change” message. In a Foreign Affairs article previewing the course he would follow in his historic opening to China, Nixon portrayed in stark terms the alternative course of history with an unchanged China: