In a front-page article in the South China Morning Post (January 29) Terry Su, President of Lulu Derivation Data Ltd, a Hong Kong-based online publishing house and think tank specialising in geopolitics, views the election of President Joe Biden as President of the US and the unprecedented, blatant liberal crackdown on the reactionary masses as an instance of the United States putting aside much of the prudence and moderation it has demanded from other countries, in the name of good fighting evil at a defining moment. He quoted US historian Timothy Snyder as having effectively issued a clarion call in The New York Times Magazine on January 9, against the forces of “white supremacism” (which he described as a mix of racism and pre-fascism, according to him) marshalled by the Republican Party and Trump, warning that the US could face a worse threat of nationwide violence four years down the road. He said while "the new master of the White House seems to have decided on his priorities and to be signalling for reconciliation with China in a subtle but unequivocal way", he asked whether "Beijing should eagerly accept this olive branch and engage with the Biden administration immediately?" He replied that 

China should "Perhaps not, for two reasons. First, although Trump and his secretary of state Mike Pompeo are gone, Biden’s hand will still be forced by the domestic, racial and ideological tensions so perfectly embodied in the close, divisive presidential election". He added that "Biden might have no more qualms than Trump about channelling these tensions into a mobilisation against China, meaning that any substantive engagement between the two sides could be manipulated to stoke anti-China hysteria and obscure the failure of his domestic agenda'. Saying that Biden has many balls to keep in the air and it will be all too easy to fail, he said: "Beijing would be a convenient scapegoat for Washington". "It would therefore be wiser for Beijing to declare that it is socially distancing. China must keep itself safe from the US’ pathological bouts of enmity towards it every time American efforts to forge domestic unity fail". In conclusion, he recalled: "Biden was quoted as recalling how he once told President Xi Jinping, years ago, that the US was about “possibilities”. Possibilities, however, go both ways; so China had better keep its distance from America for quite some time".