Matt Pottinger played a crucial, behind-the-scenes role in the Trump administration’s break with decades of bipartisan agreement about engagement with China. Pottinger felt that U.S. leaders had deluded themselves into thinking that wrapping China more tightly into the U.S. economic orbit would change the way Beijing governed. He came to these views in an unusual way for a China policymaker. He began his career as a journalist in China for Reuters and The Wall Street Journal. (We overlapp