Facing a faltering economy at home and increasingly unified opposition abroad, Beijing is softening its tone and offering concessions to the international community, Axios China author Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian writes from Taipei.

• Why it matters: The Chinese government no longer appears as invulnerable as it did just a few years ago. Tectonic shifts in geopolitical strategy are underway, as Washington and Beijing jockey in a newly uncertain superpower competition.

The stakes: If competition between the world's two most powerful countries went awry, the result could undermine climate-change mitigation, fuel a tech arms race, justify expansive surveillance regimes, divide families and — in a worst-case scenario — result in war.

What's happening: In November, Chinese President Xi Jinping met with a succession of Western democratic leaders for the first time since the pandemic began, striking a friendlier and more conciliatory tone than he has in years.

• China's economy has been heavily damaged by lockdowns and a real-estate crisis.
• China, like its leaders, is emerging from three years of pandemic isolation — zero-COVID policies are being scrapped; entry quarantines are reduced.
• Expats who fled the country during the pandemic will likely trickle back in 2023.

🔬 Zoom in: Chinese regulators recently caved in a longstanding game of chicken with the U.S. They're allowing Chinese companies listed on U.S. exchanges to fully comply with U.S. auditing requirements, ending the risk the companies would get booted off U.S. exchanges.

• This looks more substantial than the promises that China made under the Trump-era Phase 1 trade deal, which have largely failed to materialize. But here we have U.S. regulators saying they already have been given what they want — full access to the auditing records.

🔎 Between the lines: President Biden has taken a consistently tough line on Beijing. But there are signs of a more conciliatory element within the administration.

• That was most apparent when the White House discouraged Speaker Pelosi from visiting Taiwan earlier this year.

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Southwest Airlines is coming under growing regulatory scrutiny after canceling close to 11,000 flights since last Thursday, according to a Wall Street Journal tally.

• Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told "NBC Nightly News" the situation "crossed the line from what's an uncontrollable weather situation to something that is the airline's direct responsibility."

🚨 What's happening: CEO Bob Jordan said in an apology video it could take days of flying at a reduced schedule to resolve staffing issues.

🧳 An Axios colleague with a ticket for a canceled Southwest flight yesterday out of Ohio rebooked for the next available one to D.C. — not scheduled to take off until New Year's Day.

The bottom line: "This is the worst round of cancellations for any single airline I can recall in a career of more than 20 years as an industry analyst," Henry Harteveldt, an airline industry analyst for Atmosphere Research Group, told the N.Y. Times.

Tesla stock is on track to shed around 70% of its value this year, putting it among the year's worst performers in the S&P 500.

Why it matters: During the pandemic, Tesla could seemingly do no wrong, muscling its way into the exclusive club of companies worth over $1 trillion, Axios managing editor Javier E. David notes.

• But a relentless bear market has conspired with concerns about a distracted Musk — plus growing pains for electric vehicles overall — to shave billions from Tesla's market capitalization.

🥊 Dan Ives, Wedbush's veteran tech analyst, wrote in a research note yesterday:

"At the same time that Tesla is cutting prices and inventory is starting to build globally, ... Musk is viewed as 'asleep at the wheel' ... at the time investors need a CEO to navigate this Category 5 storm."

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1. President Biden landed yesterday in St. Croix, the U.S. Virgin Islands, where he'll relax through Jan. 2 with First Lady Jill Biden ... their daughter Ashley and her husband, Howard Krein ... and grandchildren Natalie and Hunter, children of the president's late son, Beau. Biden has vacationed in St. Croix since at least 2009, when he was V.P. (AP)
2. On Friday, the House Ways and Means Committee will release former President Trump's personal and business tax returns from 2015 to 2020. They'll be redacted to remove account numbers, etc. (Bloomberg)

The Washington Post found that in this painting in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda — John Trumbull's iconic depiction of the signing of the Declaration of Independence — 34 of the 47 men were slaveholders.

• 141 enslavers, 13 Confederates and six possible enslavers are depicted in 139 artworks in the Capitol, The Post reports from an examination of 400+ statues, paintings and other art.
• "There is some overlap; most of the Confederates were also enslavers," the paper notes.

What's happening: "Congress has made some efforts to address the legacy of slavery since the 2020 protests that followed the death of George Floyd," The Post reports. "But a House effort to remove statues honoring Confederates stalled in the Senate."

• Keep reading ... Go deeper in The Post's yearlong investigation into Congress's relationship with slavery.

A Supreme Court order yesterday is forcing the Biden administration to continue the controversial, pandemic-era border policy called Title 42, while legal challenges unfold, Axios' Stef Kight reports.

• The expiration of the policy — which cites the pandemic to allow border officials to expel migrants and asylum seekers rapidly — was delayed after the court intervened at the request of Republicans.

Go deeper.

Above: Members of the Texas National Guard at the border yesterday.

Sign of our times: The cover of the Jan./Feb. issue of The Atlantic is "Notes From the Apocalypse," rounding up dark visions of the future — including "the end of humanity."

• "To design the cover," associate creative director Oliver Munday writes, "the art department began by experimenting with different ways of depicting destruction — fire, explosions, ominous skies — before realizing that the key lay in 'destroying' the cover itself."
• "The final image is a trompe l'oeil in which a singed cover reveals the table of contents below. This is what a magazine that has survived the apocalypse might look like."

Don Baker — longtime Richmond bureau chief for The Washington Post, who died on Christmas Day at age 90 — once was brushed off at a news conference by someone who told him questions were only for the media.

• "I am the media, buster," the grizzled West Virginia native replied — an instant classic immortalized on the button above, given out at his retirement party.

I shared an office with Don — and an up-and-comer named Peter Baker (no relation) — at Old City Hall in Richmond, next to the Capitol, when I was starting at The Post as a Virginia political reporter.

• Don loved the game: I remember him telling us conspiratorially, as he had generations of young reporters, that everything from the dinner we were about to have with a statewide candidate was off the record — "unless it's too good!"
• Don and his wife, Nancy, showered hospitality on the reporters who came through the bureau — including invitations to their grand home on Monument Avenue, with an A+ balcony view of the Easter parade.

Among those he mentored was Politico's John Harris, who told me Don "was rather modest of physical frame, but he nonetheless projected an imposing aura — with a full beard and twinkling eyes."

• "He was also quite commanding — the senior figure in the Richmond press corps and among the most respected ever."

Don Baker lives on in "A Perfect Candidate," a documentary about Oliver North's 1994 losing quest to unseat then-Sen. Chuck Robb (D-Va.).

• Baker, doing his daily job as a reporter on the trail, is a recurring character in the film, directed by R.J. Cutler and David Van Taylor.

"For us," Cutler tells me, "Don was the audience surrogate — the hard-boiled, true-blue member of the so-called liberal media elite."

• "Time and again, Don served as a powerful reminder of the George Carlin observation that if you scratch a cynic, you'll find a disappointed idealist. For he was an idealist ... who believed in the role of journalism as crucial to the defense of our democratic system."

"With a wicked sense of humor, a twinkle in his eye, and a romantic's open heart, he was a great and fearless journalist," Cutler added.

• "But he was most of all an American — or as he put it in the film, 'an Amurican.' We’ve lost one of the greats."

Read the Post obit.