President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping are due to sit down on Wednesday for their first talks in a year in San Francisco, where an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, or APEC, summit is currently taking place.
APEC is a group of 21 economies that accounts for about 62% of global GDP and almost half of global trade, but it has increasingly become a stage for strategic competition between the US and China.
Both Biden and Xi are looking to bring a greater measure of stability to a relationship that has been strained by differences over export controls, tensions over Taiwan, the wars in the Middle East and Europe, and the US president having offended his counterpart in June by classifying him as a “dictator”.
What the US president is looking for at the table
The meeting is expected to cover a host of global issues: The Israel-Hamas war; Russia’s invasion of Ukraine; North Korea’s ties with Russia; Taiwan; the Indo-Pacific; human rights; stemming the flow of fentanyl from China; artificial intelligence; and “fair” trade and economic relations, according to Reuters, citing senior Biden administration officials.
No major breakthroughs are expected, rather greater diplomacy from this point on – promises to talk more on key issues, including climate, global health, economic stability, counter-narcotic efforts and potentially the resumption of some military-to-military channels after a high-level freeze.
“The president is determined to see the re-establishment of military-to-military ties because he believes it’s in the US national security interest,” said National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan in an interview with CBS.
Amid high geopolitical tensions, the meeting is expected to give an opportunity to the US President to press Xi to impress on Iran that it would be unwise to try to expand the conflict in the Middle East, one official said.
Biden’s administration believes the Chinese, a big buyer of Iranian oil, have considerable leverage with Iran, which is a major backer of Hamas.
With the US presidential election less than a year away, administration officials said Biden will make clear that Chinese interference in the vote will not be tolerated.
What the president of China is seeking
The Chinese president is looking for assurances from Biden that the US president will not support Taiwan independence, will not start a new cold war and will not suppress China’s economic growth.
Tariffs on Chinese goods, sanctions against Chinese companies and export restrictions on high-tech products such as advanced chips, have become “the most important issue” for China.
Beijing has demanded rollbacks in tariffs and sanctions. But Xi, this time, is likely to seek assurance from Biden that the US will not pile new ones onto China.
Xi is also expected to address US business leaders in San Francisco, and bolster confidence that China is a safe place to invest.
According to Bloomberg, China is considering resuming purchases of Boeing’s 737 Max aircraft at this meeting. The US company has been all but shut out of new orders from Chinese carriers since 2017 amid rising political and trade tensions between Beijing and Washington.
Chinese President Xi Jinping sent promising messages for the world in the beginning of October, when he called the China-US ties “the most important bilateral relationship in the world” while hosting a US delegation, and he also added that “we have 1,000 reasons to improve China-US relations, but not one reason to ruin them.”
Xi owns Biden and paid his puppet $1.5 billion via Hunter. Don’t expect anything good from this meeting.
Two blatant crooks in a concert of death to America.
Wow! San Francisco can get rid of the illegals in 24 hour time frame…Okay you other cities should follow suit! Put all the illegals on Alcatraz island. And a couple of other bus loads to Mayorkas house.