Commentary During a top-level meeting in Beijing in mid-January, Chinese leader Xi Jinping told officials that “time and momentum” are on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s side. But Xi seems overly optimistic. Since he came to power, the CCP’s “time and momentum” has been declining and China has even fallen back to the time of the Cultural Revolution. The relationship between the United States and China has never been as bad as it is today; and the CCP has never been as isolated from the international community as it is today. During the contested U.S. presidential election, the CCP mistakenly thought that American democracy had come to an end and dictatorship had a chance after the U.S. Capitol building was breached by protesters while lawmakers were counting electoral votes on Jan. 6. Beijing assumed that the “time” had arrived, the United States was about to “fall,” and the CCP would …