Had Donald Trump been the U.S. president hosting this week’s APEC meetings, I have no doubt that the headline from the event would have been unchanged. It would have been: “He’s a dictator.”
The only difference is it would be Xi Jinping who was saying it to describe Trump.
Other than that, though, a Trump-hosted APEC meeting would likely have been unrecognizably different from the successful and productive forum hosted by President Joe Biden.
After the Obama administration both parties have taken hardline stances on China. Their theft of intellectual property, ignoring international law, massive subsidies of industries that target foreign economies, human rights abuses, wolf warrior diplomacy etc. etc. had proven that democracy wasn’t going to take root even when they were uplifted economically.
China has no friends in either party now and the reaction of the a potential Hillary Clinton administration in 2016 likely would have been the same.
The US has to brutalize and strangle China’s economy to bring them to the table and force change. There is no need to provide incentives to other Asian powers as China’s actions against their neighbors are enough to put them in the USA’s sphere of influence.