This analysis was excerpted from the April 23 edition of CNN's Meanwhile in America, the daily email about US politics for global readers. Click here to read past editions and subscribe.

(CNN) In a backhanded compliment to its growing power and influence, China is about to take a beating in the US election.

China's unhappy distinction as the origin of the coronavirus has turned relations with the US into a potentially defining issue in the clash between Joe Biden and President Donald Trump. Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, accuses Trump of downplaying the pandemic earlier this year, in his zeal to flatter China's strongman leader, Xi Jinping. " Trump rolled over for the Chinese. He took their word for it ," charges one Biden ad.

Trump is now unloading on China (one way to distract from his own early negligence). His campaign sees Beijing-bashing as winning strategy, and it has painted Biden, a Washington longtimer, as the epitome of a failed generational doctrine to usher China peacefully into the global economy.

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