AEI scholars are available to comment on Chinese President Hu Jintao's visit to the United States this week.

I keep replaying the video in my mind of the leader of the free world running a game of three card monte with the Russian government against the American people—especially that godawful little gesture where Obama reaches toward Medvedev for an intimate moment:

It’s folly to expect Beijing to seriously help in curbing Pyongyang.

It appears that China’s leaders are worried that Washington is getting smart, and trying to “westernize and divide China” through a culture war. And President Hu Jintao, who leaves office this year after his five-year term is up, has decided to make an Alamo-like last stand over culture.

Yet his meetings with America’s top leaders, from President Obama on down, will be just as much a chance for Xi to size up the administration’s new policies toward Asia as they are an opportunity for U.S. officials to get a sense of whom they will be dealing with starting this fall.

For East Asian politicos, there’s not that much to grab headline attention in the world’s most economically dynamic region. Or maybe there is.

That the Hu Jintao visit was a nonevent is just as well, for the United States could use a little quiet time to rethink its basic approach to China's rise.

Obama has a long-standing habit of seeing failure to support his agenda as a failure of character. Meanwhile, it’s Obama and his allies in Congress who’ve been at the forefront of the effort to make America less competitive.