Why Xi Jinping sounds friendlier to America

When invited to sum up the state of China’s relations with America, a close observer in Beijing drops a surprising literary reference, comparing the countries to damned souls sent to Hell in “Huis Clos” (“No Exit”), a play by Jean-Paul Sartre. In the gloomy Frenchman’s masterwork, Hell turns out to be an antique-filled sitting room peopled by unlikeable strangers. These wretches come to realise that they must endure each other’s company, and mutual contempt, for all eternity. The afterlife needs no red-hot pokers to be a torment, gasps one of Sartre’s sinners: “Hell is—other people!” The reference to existential angst by the observer in Beijing is more than startling. It is meant to be encouraging.