HU JINTAO

President Joe Biden is being forced to go virtual for many of his leader-to-leader talks during the coronavirus pandemic, and the resulting Zoom meetings just aren't a natural fit for the back-slapping politician.

In this photo released by China's Xinhua News Agency, attendees applaud during a ceremony to mark the official end of extreme poverty in China held at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Thursday, Feb. 25, 2021. The party announced in November, with little fanfare, that China no longer had anyone in extreme poverty. AdThey credit Xi with launching an initiative shortly after taking power in 2012 that enabled China to beat by a decade the 2030 target set by the World Bank for eliminating extreme poverty. China’s official definition of extreme poverty is an income per person of 11 yuan ($1.70) per day. The World Bank’s middle-income poverty standard is income of $5.50 per person per day.

Chinese President Xi Jinping (C) attends a military parade with former presidents Hu Jintao (L) and Jiang Zemin in Tiananmen Square in Beijing on October 1, 2019, to mark the 70th anniversary of the founding of the Peoples Republic of China. BEIJING At the highest level, Chinese leaders don't appear eager to make major economic reforms right now to what has long been criticized as a state-dominated economy. Instead, the ruling party is urging officials to "learn" and "modernize." "Some officials lack (the) ability to adapt and learn," Jiang said, according to an official translation of his Mandarin-language remarks. "We ask them to learn, learn, learn.

U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao attend an official south lawn arrival ceremony for Hu at the White House in Washington. The United States did not fully comply with a World Trade Organization ruling and could face Chinese sanctions if it does not remove certain tariffs that break WTO rules, the WTO's appeals judges said in a ruling on Tuesday. But the ruling also said the United States must accept Chinese prices to measure subsidies, even though USTR viewed those prices as "distorted." "The WTO appellate report undermines WTO rules, making them less effective to counteract Chinese SOE subsidies that are harming U.S. workers and businesses and distorting markets worldwide," it added. China's commerce ministry said the WTO appellate report proves the U.S. "repeatedly abused trade remedy measures, which seriously damaged the fairness and impartiality of the international trade environment."