Mei Xiang, Tian Tian, and their U.S.-born cub, Xiao Qi Ji, have safely made it back home. The three pandas landed in China’s Sichuan province on Nov. 9 after a 19-hour flight from Washington. To ensure a first-class journey, the pandas had access to toys, bamboo, and biscuits throughout the flight. The return of the three pandas to China signals the end of an era. Since the thaw in U.S.-China relations in the 1970s, Beijing had been loaning pandas to U.S. zoos. Fast-forward 50 years: Amid sky-high U.S.-China tensions, Beijing now wants its bears back home (or to send them to Qatar).
The end of China’s panda diplomacy in the United States is only one example of how sour relations between Washington and Beijing have turned since then-U.S. President Donald Trump launched his trade war in 2018. There is little hope that the upcoming meeting between U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco will change the relationship’s dynamics. Here is a preview of both sides’ perspectives, potential deliverables, and the meeting’s likely impact on future U.S.-China relations.
1. U.S. expectations for the meeting reflect election politics. Less than a year away, the November 2024 presidential election is already dominating the U.S. political agenda. Bipartisan tensions abound on virtually every topic, be it support for Ukraine, subsidies for clean tech, or abortion rights. By contrast, the perceived need to adopt a tough stance on China is perhaps the only topic that still attracts broad bipartisan support. Biden will therefore seek to use his meeting with Xi to demonstrate resolve in a bid to score brownie points with both Democratic and Republican voters.
Pleasing both sides of the U.S. political spectrum will not be easy. On the one hand, recent polling data show that 73 percent of Americans want their government to pursue high-level diplomatic dialogue with China. On the other hand, Republican lawmakers are pressing Biden to go to the meeting with a hawkish, 10-point wish list of demands they know will be unacceptable to the Chinese side. Such a move would kill diplomatic dialogue, which Republicans reject as having “negligible benefit[s]” and an “unacceptable cost.”
2. Beijing is focused on optics for its domestic audience. The Chinese economy is going through a rough patch. The situation is probably less grim than many hawks would like to think, but the mood is bleak among Chinese entrepreneurs and consumers. China’s post-COVID economic rebound has proved disappointing. More than 1 in 5 young Chinese are unemployed. The country’s debt-fueled property market is in tatters. Local governments’ debt loads also look unsustainably high. And, to make matters worse, slow global growth is weighing on China’s export-oriented manufacturing firms.
Amid this bleak economic outlook, Beijing will focus on the meeting’s optics. Xi will want to use the meeting to show Chinese citizens that the U.S. side is respecting and valuing China’s views, even if they diverge from Washington’s. This will be especially important with regards to Taiwan, which China considers a renegade province. Xi will probably seek to get reassurance that the United States will not favor any anti-China candidate ahead of the island’s January 2024 presidential election—let alone support Taiwan’s independence.
3. Where both sides’ goals converge: keeping communication channels open. Washington and Beijing both assume that they have nothing to gain in ratcheting up tensions with the other side. Such a move would harm the U.S. economy, the most important topic for many American voters and therefore a key determinant of Biden’s reelection chances. Seen from China, tensions would further spook multinationals and accelerate their plans to shift production away from Chinese soil, hitting economic growth and fueling unemployment. As a result, both sides are keen to stabilize the relationship: Beijing and Washington acknowledge that things are not going well but do not want things to get any worse.
Thus, the United States and China want to ensure that communication channels remain open in the year ahead in a bid to avoid misunderstandings about their intentions. No surprises is the preferred course of action. At the technical level, both sides have been hard at work since June to explain their respective positions (and agree to disagree on many issues, such as U.S. controls on technology exports to China and competition-distorting Chinese subsidies to state-owned enterprises). Such behind-the-scenes conversations will form the linchpin of U.S.-China engagement in 2024, especially as it is unlikely that Biden will meet with Xi during an election year.
4. There are no major deliverables in sight; for now, talking to each other is the goal. That both sides are simply talking to each other is the main deliverable of the meeting, with neither side expecting any breakthroughs. That said, there are four areas to watch where Washington and Beijing could make some progress:
Chinese exports of fentanyl precursors: Chinese firms are shipping chemicals used to manufacture fentanyl, a synthetic drug that is 100 times stronger than morphine, to Mexican drug cartels that subsequently smuggle the drugs to the United States. Fentanyl overdose is now the leading cause of death for Americans between the ages of 18 and 45. An agreement for Beijing to clamp down on such shipments would be a bipartisan win for Washington.
U.S. reassurance that de-risking is not about curbing China’s economic rise: U.S. officials have been at pains in recent months to shift perceptions in Beijing that Washington’s de-risking plans aim to curb China’s economic rise. In truth, Beijing has a point: It is hard to imagine that U.S. export controls on advanced technology will not weigh on Chinese growth. Clear messaging from Biden highlighting China’s right to grow would be seen as a positive gesture in Beijing.
Starting a dialogue on artificial intelligence (AI): Both sides could pledge to ban the use of AI in autonomous weapons, such as drones, following U.S. efforts to develop global rules governing the use of AI in the defense sector. Such an agreement would be mostly symbolic, given both sides’ long-standing interest in developing AI-powered weapons systems, such as killer robots to replace or supplement human infantry. However, even a fake pledge on AI would have some value, as it could pave the way for more collaboration between both sides on technology regulation.
Maintaining the status quo on Taiwan: Biden’s top military advisor signaled U.S. willingness to reestablish the military communications channels that China shut down after the visit of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan in August 2022. Such a plan may remain overambitious at this stage, but the meeting will present an opportunity for the United States to reiterate its resolve to defend the island amid Beijing’s rising war talk. This message will likely be communicated quietly, given Taipei’s private pleas for Washington to dial down the rhetoric around a possible Chinese invasion.
The upcoming Biden-Xi meeting will not change the direction of U.S.-China relations. The U.S. side will not lift controls on advanced technology exports to China, and Beijing’s anti-Western rhetoric will not disappear any time soon. For both sides, the preferred outcome from the meeting is that there will be nothing to write home about. This may sound underwhelming, but the simple fact that the leaders of the world’s two biggest economies are talking to each other again despite the sky-high tensions is, in itself, the meeting’s key takeaway.
