The meeting between China and the U.S. is critical for China to maintain its cultural and economic ties with the rest of the world — a statement from Beijing
The meeting coming up between Biden andXi comes at a crucial time for both leaders. Having further consolidated his power at last month’s Communist Party Congress, Xi is heading into the meeting as the strongest Chinese leader since Mao Zedong.
After taking power, they continued to meet in person. The last time they met face to face was in 2015, during Xi’s first state visit to the US as China’s top leader.
Today, distrust is running low, the rhetoric is not friendly and disputes in areas including trade, technology, security and ideology continue to grow.
“There’s not going to be a joint statement of any sort here. A senior U.S. administration official told reporters that the meeting was not being driven by deliverables. “The president believes it is critical to build a floor for the relationship and ensure that there are rules of the road that bound our competition.”
The optimism of a decade ago has been replaced by suspicion and hostility. The US-China relationship, when Biden became President, was in its worst state in decades as trade, technology, and politics were at odds with each other.
“I don’t think one meeting is going to rescue or really even redefine the relationship,” says Evan Medeiros, a professor at Georgetown University and former White House China advisor. “If they’re lucky, if it goes well, maybe they can bend the trajectory a little bit.”
On Wednesday, Biden told a news conference that he wants to “lay out what each of our red lines are” when he sits down with Xi, but experts say that might not be as straightforward as it sounds.
For China, there is no bigger issue than Taiwan. The island has been considered part of China, but Beijing doesn’t feel that the U.S. is ready to accept it as part of the mainland.
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“Those who play with fire will perish by it. It is hoped that the U.S. will be clear-eyed about this,” Xi warned Biden over the summer, when the two leaders met virtually.
The use of force remains an option for China, but the Communist Party chief repeated his preference for peaceful reunification in October.
Nancy Pelosi was in Taiwan in August. The Beijing responded with large-scale military exercises.
Biden will likely seek to reassure Xi that Washington’s long-standing policy regarding Taiwan has not changed, and that the United States does not support Taiwan independence. Analysts say Xi is likely to remain skeptical — particularly with the Republican Party projected to take control of at least the House of Representatives following the midterm elections.
“I think the Biden administration will be less flexible on China than before,” says an international relations professor at a university.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has said he would like to visit Taiwan if he becomes majority leader. Such a move could be disastrous, warns another Chinese expert on international relations.
“When Pelosi went, the Chinese lost face. A Chinese expert on international affairs who spoke to the media, but was not authorized to speak to the media, says “Maybe they will just take action next time.”
Biden’s foreign policy has focused on taking on perceived threats from China. The latest salvo came in early October, when the administration imposed export controls that prohibit the sale to China of cutting-edge microchips and the equipment used to make them.
“Throughout the Cold War, there were a series of really tough export controls imposed on the Soviet Union by the U.S.,” says Chris Miller, author of the recently published Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology. “There’s really a lot of similarities, to be honest.”
The U.S. says the latest export controls are designed to keep key technologies out of the hands of China’s military and security agencies, but experts say they will have a broader impact.
In China’s case, the restrictions could be difficult to enforce. Small and easy to smuggle across the borders are the reasons for this. Also, total enforcement would require other countries that are part of the complex semiconductors supply chain to be on board, and that’s a work in progress.
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Beijing has cut three channels of dialogue and suspended cooperation in five other areas in the wake of Nancy Pelosi’s visit. The United States and China have cut back on their contact.
Experts think a commitment to opening more channels of communication could be made if Biden andXi can muster the political will.
The issue with China is that they don’t like to meet with people and exchange views. Xi Jinping is not very creative in the way he interacts with his counterparts,” said Jean-Pierre Cabestan, a professor of political science at Hong Kong Baptist University.
Now that the Party Congress and the U.S. mid-term elections are over, he believes there is a chance to take a little gamble.
Zhu cautions against expecting too much from the summit. A sincere discussion may help deepen understanding between the two leaders, he says — but that’s it.
Medeiros, the former U.S. official, says the current moment is dangerous — and in some ways, similar to the 1950s and early 1960s, when mistrust grew between the U.S. and the Soviet Union and they each “tested and probed” each others’ boundaries.
After the Cuban Missile Crisis both sides believed that strategic restraint, often institutionalized through agreements like arms control, was in their interests, he says.
“The trajectory of the relationship is nothing but positive, and it’s overwhelmingly in the mutual interest of both our countries,” Biden said in 2011 when, as vice president, he visited Beijing to build a personal relationship with China’s then leader-in-waiting.
On Monday, the two leaders are set to meet each other for another honest exchange in Bali, Indonesia, on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit. The mood in the room may not be as warm as the location.
The Democrats are projected to keep the Senate in a major victory in the US mid-term elections, with Biden arriving in Asia after a better-than- expected performance by his party. Asked Sunday whether the results allowed him to go into Monday’s face-to-face with a stronger hand, Biden voiced confidence. “I know I’m coming in stronger,” he told reporters.
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Other key topics on the agenda include Russia’s war in Ukraine – another significant point of tension, as well as areas where the US hopes to cooperate with China – such as North Korea’s ongoing provocations and climate change.
A senior White House official said Thursday Biden wants to use the talks to “build a floor” for the relationship – in other words, to prevent it from free falling into open conflict. The US official said that the main goal of the sit-down was not to reach agreements or deliverables, but rather to gain a better understanding of the priority of each leader.
US national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters on Saturday that the meeting is not likely to result in a major breakthrough or shift in the relationship.
His assessment of climate cooperation is notrosier. “China and the US can find many common interests on this, but when it comes to how to deal with climate change specifically, it always leads to antagonism on policies and rivalry over ideology and global influence,” Shi said.
“The Chinese believe the US goal is to keep China down so we can contain it. The US believes that China wants to weaken the alliance system by pushing the US out of Asia, according to Scott Kennedy, an adviser in Chinese business and economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Each side blames the other entirely for the state of the relationship and each believes they are faring better than the other in the situation, said Kennedy, who has recently returned from a weeks-long visit to China – a rare opportunity in recent years due to China’s zero-Covid border restrictions.
“The Chinese think they’re winning, the Americans think they’re winning, and so they’re willing to bear these costs. Kennedy said that the other side is unlikely to make any significant changes. “All of those things reduce the likelihood of significant adjustments.”
But experts say the very fact that the two leaders are having a face-to-face conversation is itself a positive development. When suspicions run deep, and tensions are high, it’s important to keep dialogue open.
I think the US and China don’t have a very precise idea on what their red lines are. And I also don’t think either has been very clear about what positive rewards the other side would reap from staying within those red lines,” said Kennedy, of CSIS.
China responded by launching large scale military exercises around Taiwan that formed an effective blockade; it also halted dialogue with the US in a number of areas, from military, climate change and cross-border crime to drug trafficking.
Now the two leaders are sitting down in the same room – a result of weeks of intensive discussions between the two sides – Taiwan is widely expected to top their agenda. But in a sign of the contentiousness of the issue, barbs have already been traded.
“On the issue of Ukraine, China has already made its position clear many times. It will not change simply because of the talks with the US President. He said, “China has already stopped treating the denuclearization of North Korea as a fundamental element of its Korean Peninsular policy.”
Both the US and China agree that restoration of climate and military talks will be a positive outcome from increased communication between the two countries.
The appointment, which was announced Friday, comes as Beijing’s relations with Washington continue to show strain over a range of issues from trade to Taiwan. He replaced Wang Yi, 69, who was promoted to the politburo of the ruling Communist Party in October, and is expected to continue to work in foreign policy.
An active Twitter user with more than a quarter-million followers, Qin is a trusted aide to China’s top leader, Xi Jinping. The 56-year-old will now become one of the youngest foreign ministers in the history of the People’s Republic of China.
Qin articulated his thinking on diplomacy in an interview in 2013. “Diplomacy is complex and systematic work. It can be hard with some softness, or soft with some hardness,” he said. It can be either hard or soft. As time and situation change, the two may transform into each other.”
The new face of China’s diplomacy has a lot to-do list, from U.S.-China relations to Beijing’s partnership with Moscow.
“His top priority would be to improve relations with the U.S., given the lingering domestic sentiment that is anti-U.S. [Secretary of State Antony] Blinken will be visiting China in two weeks. He needs to improve his relations with the developed countries to aid China’s economic recovery. She says he needs to deal with Russia and North Korea.
Qin’s Foreign Ministry Addressed the 2008 “Venorocious Attack” on the Taiwanese State Media and the Embedded Office of the United Press International
Asked by a foreign reporter in 2008 about Guns N’ Roses’ album “Chinese Democracy,” which Chinese state media called a “venomous attack” on the nation, Qin chided the journalist: “Many people don’t like this kind of music because it’s too raucous and noisy.” He said he thought you’re a mature adult.
At home, Qin’s handling of tough questions has won him applause – from Chinese media to his alma mater, the University of International Relations in Beijing, which praised him for “never beating around the bush.”
After joining China’s foreign ministry in 1988, Qin was first assigned to work for the Beijing bureau of the United Press International, a U.S. news agency, on a short stint. At the time, Chinese nationals couldn’t be directly employed by non- Chinese news outlets and they were assigned local employees.
He worked as a diplomat and a minister before becoming a third and second secretary at the Chinese embassy in London.
A short time after being appointed as Beijing’s top diplomat in the U.S., he traveled around the country and met with some notable people. Upon arriving in Washington, Qin struck a conciliatory tone, telling reporters that “the door of China-U.S. relations, which is already open, cannot be closed.”
If the Taiwanese authorities continue their pursuit of independence, it will most likely lead to a military conflict between China and the United States.