Commentary “We’re in a competition with China and other countries to win the 21st century,” President Biden told a joint session of Congress on April 28. The speech was panned by a jaundiced writer in the New York Times as oversimplified. But he got that wrong. Democracy is in an existential competition, if not conflict, with China. And Biden knows it. “Secretary Blinken can tell you, I spent a lot of time with President Xi—traveled over 17,000 miles with him, spent over 24 hours in private discussions with him. When he called [to] congratulate, we had a two-hour discussion,” said Biden. “He’s deadly earnest on becoming the most significant, consequential nation in the world.” Biden makes a Freudian slip here, implying that Xi thinks of himself as a future hegemonic Chinese nation. “[President Xi] and others, autocrats, think that democracy can’t compete in the 21st century with autocracies, because it …