The Xi-Biden summit

I had planned to write this week on the conclusions reached at Sharm al Sheikh’s climate summit in Egypt. I had expected that the meeting would have concluded over the weekend and some new goals would have been set by world leaders to deal with the worsening global warming situation. The meeting is in session as I write these lines; I will write about it when it ends and the governments attending issue a statement on how they were going to manage the catastrophe the globe was likely to face if a thoughtful strategy is not adopted. What is in store if strong actions are not taken was witnessed by Pakistan when rain and floods seriously damaged the economy and killed thousands of people. Leaving this subject for a later day, at this time I will write about the meeting of Presidents Joe Biden of the US and Xi Jinping of China.

Biden and Xi met in Bali, Indonesia on November 14, 2002. The two leaders were attending the meeting of the Group of 20, made up of the world’s most important nations. The definition of importance was the size of population and that of the national economy. Pakistan, with the world’s fifth largest population, should have been included in the group but was kept out by India’s maneuvering. The Biden-Xi meeting was the subject of serious analysis by the media and members of the policy circles in both Washington and Beijing.

The meeting must have been watched with great interest by policymakers in Islamabad since America’s cool attitude towards Pakistan has been matched by the warmth that has developed between Pakistan and China. It is unlikely that in the three-hour long Biden-Xi meeting, Pakistan would have been mentioned as a country of interest for the two superpowers. However, Pakistan would be affected, especially if relations between Beijing and Washington go further downhill.

Although Biden, as is his wont, had exaggerated the time the two leaders had spent in the past 11 years, they had come to know each other well. Both had referred to each other as “old friends”. The first meeting was in Beijing in 2011 preceding the visit to China by then Present Barack Obama. Xi then was preparing to take over as his country’s president and spent a fair amount of time with then Vice President Biden. He arranged a visit by the American leader to Sichuan and accompanied him on this field trip. Biden said at the conclusion of that visit that he and President Obama “want to see a rising China. We don’t fear a rising China.” That sentiment no longer guides American policy towards China. In 2022, the Pentagon issued warnings that China poses the most comprehensive and serious challenge to US national security. With colliding positions on trade, Ukraine, and especially Taiwan — and even fears of global US-China cold war — the pressure on President Biden to try and bring China in line with the US interests could not be greater.

“We’re in an awful dynamic, and what is being put to the test is whether there is enough of a relationship, enough respect and ability to listen,” said Daniel Russel, a US diplomat who helped plan Biden’s trip to meet with Xi in 2011. But while the experts feared that the meeting between the two leaders was unlikely to produce positive results, there was consensus that the two sides moved forward in a positive way. Before their meeting went underway, the two leaders greeted each other as old friends. They walked towards each other with stretched hands and shook them with warmth. Both knew that the world was watching them closely and each move would produce commentary.

In the meeting attended by experts from both sides, they agreed that neither wanted competition between them to erupt into open conflict. Both sides agreed that they needed to make serious efforts to repair a relationship that at the time of their meeting was at a most rancorous point in decades. However, they did not glide over their disagreements in several areas that included the future of Taiwan, military competition in western Pacific and the Asian continent, technology restrictions imposed by the US to deter China from overking America in the field. The two leaders as customary in these kinds of encounters did not hold a joint presser. Instead, they spoke separately to the press. “We are going to compete vigorously, but I am not looking for conflict,” Biden told the press. “I’m looking to manage this competition responsibly.” Biden did not call the dealings between the two countries as a struggle between democracy and autocracy as he had said on several previous occasions, describing the different political systems being followed by the two countries. “I absolutely believe that there need not be a new cold war.” He referred to a gospel lyric Kumbaya which praises God by saying that “I’m not suggesting that this was Kumbaya”, but we found several areas where we could support each other, and that way help the world.

According to a summary issued by Beijing, Xi said in his remarks, “as the leaders of these two great powers, China and the United States, must play the role setting the direction of the rudder and we should find the correct approach for developing bilateral relations.” Wang Yi, the current foreign minister who will not hold the job when, in the spring of 2023, a new Chinese government takes office, said that Taiwan was an issue where “the United States cannot and should not cross the redline”. He added: “The United States and China should show the world that they are able to manage and control their differences, avoiding misjudgments or fierce competition sliding toward clashes and confrontation.”

During their discussion, Xi appealed to Biden to use his authority to rein in the distrust of China that pervades in Washington these days. “China has never sought to alter the current international order, does not meddle in American domestic politics and has no intention of challenging or replacing the United States,” Xi emphasised in his talks. In October, Jake Sullivan, President Biden’s National Security Adviser, said his team saw China as a strategic rival with the “intent to reshape the international order”, while Xi warned of an increasingly perilous world in which unnamed foes — implicitly the US and its allies in Western Europe — aim to “exert pressure on China”.

Those who watch China from the US were positive about the outcome. “Both leaders went into the meeting to buy time and take down the temperature, albeit for different reasons. They accomplished that,” said Evan S Medeiros, a Georgetown University Professor who was President Obama’s top adviser on Asia-Pacific Affairs. “The real test of the meeting is not today, but in six to 12 months when we see if the problems were managed or worsen.”

Neither leader went into the Bali talks expecting the other side to concede on major areas of disagreement. The point they said was to keep the lines of communication open to prevent the relationship from worsening further. To that end it was indicated that the US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken will travel to Beijing to continue the dialogue early next year.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 21^st, 2022.

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