President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping will meet for the first time in a year next week, capping months of diplomacy by top US officials to ease tensions between the world’s two largest economies and manage what Mr Biden has described as “strategic competition” between Washington and Beijing.
According to White House officials who briefed reporters on plans for the bilateral meeting, the two leaders will have their first sit-down since last year’s G20 summit during next week’s Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders’ meeting in San Francisco.
One senior administration official said the meeting would take place next Wednesday (15 November) in an unspecified location in the San Francisco Bay Area, but declined to offer further details, citing security considerations.
The official described the US position going into the leaders’ confab as one of relative strength, with the US economy booming thanks to “game-changing investments in American strength at home” delivered in bills signed by Mr Biden last year, including the CHIPS and Science Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, and the bipartisan infrastructure law the president continues to tout as he pursues re-election.
“The United States has had the strongest recovery and lowest inflation of any leading economy. We've created 14 million jobs more in two years than any president in a four year term, we've had 21 straight months of unemployment under 4 percent for the first time in half a century and the US economy grew by 4.9 per cent in the third quarter,” the official said.
“Large scale investments in semiconductors and clean energy production are up 20 fold since 2019, we're estimating 3.5 trillion in public and private investment over the next six decades, construction spending on manufacturing has doubled”.
The official also pointed out that the US has spent the last year “having deepened our alliances and partnerships abroad in ways that would have been unimaginable just a few years ago” as Mr Biden has executed a long-touted refocusing of US foreign policy on shoring up alliances in the Indo-Pacific region.
Since he last met with Mr Xi in Indonesia last year, Mr Biden has hosted heads of state or government from Japan, the Republic of Korea, the Philippines, India and Australia for meetings at the White House, as well as a historic trilateral summit with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kashida at Camp David in August.
Mr Biden has also overseen the launch of expanded partnerships with Indo-Pacific allies, including the joint Australian-British-American agreement to enable the Royal Australian Navy to acquire and operate nuclear-powered, conventionally-armed submarines based on US and British technology.
The official also noted that Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin, UN Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, US climate envoy John Kerry and the current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have each visited the Indo-Pacific during the last week, and pointed out that Mr Biden will also meet with Indonesian President Joko Widodo on Monday before he leaves for San Francisco.
“After investing at home in strengthening ties with allies and partners abroad, now is precisely the time for high-level diplomacy,” said the official, who stressed that the “steady and consistent” approach the Biden Administration is taking towards China does not mean America is “stepping back from our interests and values” in favour of smoother relations with Beijing.
Indeed, the official noted that the Biden Administration has implemented new export controls on semiconductors and related manufacturing technology, as well as restrictions on Chinese investment in the US.
“We've taken actions against PRC entities involved in human rights abuses or slaver nonproliferation and supporting Russia's war in Ukraine, and we've continued to uphold freedom of navigation in the region by flying sailing and operating wherever international law allows,” the official said, adding the caveat that Mr Biden and his advisers are “clear-eyed” in their belief that “intense competition requires and demands intense diplomacy to manage tensions and to prevent competition from verging into conflict or confrontation”.
That “intense diplomacy” has involved months of high-level work by Mr Biden’s top aides, many of whom have made the trek to Beijing in efforts to restart bilateral communications after diplomatic and military tensions were inflamed by the US discovery and shootdown of an errand Chinese-owned spy balloon off the American east coast in February.
The last eight months have seen three separate meetings between Mr Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, and his Chinese counterpart, as well as visits to Beijing by Mr Blinken, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo.
In turn, China’s vice president, foreign minister, vice-premier and other top PRC officials have trekked to Washington for reciprocal sit-downs, as the US and China have launched what a senior US official described as “working-level consultations ... in discreet, carefully-chosen areas” such as “arms control, maritime issues, and macro economic and debt issues”.
The planned meeting between Mr Biden and Mr Xi, who have known each other for roughly 12 years — since both men served as their respective countries’ vice presidents — will be the seventh interaction between the two leaders since Mr Biden took office in January 2021.
A senior White House official said the leaders are expected to “discuss strategic direction of the bilateral relationship the importance of maintaining open lines of communication,” including restarting the direct military-to-military communications channels that have been cut off since the spy balloon incident.
“We expect they'll cover a range of regional and global issues ... such as Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas conflict. And they'll consider how we can work together where our interests align, particularly on transnational challenges that affect the international community such as climate and counter-narcotics,” they said.
In response to a query from The Independent, one of the officials who briefed reporters on Thursday said Mr Biden is also expected to offer a warning to Mr Xi against undertaking any influence operations or other efforts to interfere in the upcoming 2024 presidential election.
While White House officials took pains to stress that Mr Biden would surely raise “issues where we have differences” with Beijing — including human rights, the South China Sea, and relations with Taiwan, they also stressed that the dialog Mr Biden and Mr Xi will undertake is necessary, despite the failure of US efforts to encourage China to make changes in their political and economic system.
“We know efforts to shape or reform China, over several decades have failed, but we expect China to be around and to be a major player on the world stage for the rest of our lifetimes,” the official said. “We think diplomacy is how we clear up misperceptions signal, communicate, avoid surprises and explain our competitive steps. It is also how we work together where and when our interests align ... and deliver on key priorities for the American people”.
