Speaking at the  Beijing Xiangshan Forum on December 2, Yan Xuetong, Dean of the Institute of International Relations at Beijing’s Tsinghua University cautioned against “wishful thinking” about the incoming Biden administration and anticipated that “Unpredictability, uncertainty will still be the basic characteristic of the coming years” and “The world will definitely become more chaotic.” He predicted that Joe Biden’s China policy would shift from the trade war into frictions in the political realm, without lowering the scale and intensity of clashes between the two countries and that “Biden will take a multilateral approach and the pressure on China will increase rather than decrease.” He said Biden will "take a harder line and invest more resources in these issues, resulting in more serious conflicts". Yan Xuetong said China should reach a consensus with the US that competition was at the core of their relationship, which would give the two powers a common ground for pragmatic discussions on how to manage and prevent it from escalating into war. He forecast that “in the next 10 years, there will be no global leader". He added “The US cannot accept China as its equal, but China demands it, so something like the Franco-German joint leadership in Europe is also impossible.”