The meeting face to face that this Wednesday they have held in California Joe Biden and Xi Jinping has served to stabilize the bilateral relationship between the United States and China and stop, at least for the moment, the deterioration, which has exploded in the last year after several episodes of tension. The two leaders have maintained for about four hours conversations which Biden later highlighted in a solo press conference as “among the most constructive and productive” than it has ever had with its Chinese counterpart. And although the meeting has not achieved great milestones, it has left some specific achievements and what Biden has called “important advances,” including the reactivation of direct communications between armies from both countries.
“We are in a competitive relationship but my responsibility is to do this rational and manageable for that does not end in a conflict, That’s what this is about, finding a space where we can come together and find mutual interests”, Biden explained.
What remains to be seen is whether the renewed spirit of harmony is maintained after that same appearance before the press, and before a last question already off the microphone in which he was asked if he still considered Xi a dictator, As he called him in June, provoking indignation in Beijing, Biden responded: “it’s just that it is. “He is a dictator in the sense that he is a guy who runs a communist country based on a totally different form of government than ours,” he said.
SEE THIS: Secretary of State Antony Blinken reacts to President Biden off-the-cuff remark calling China’s Xi Jinping a dictator. https://t.co/5RSY22R2J1 pic.twitter.com/zngQb02zcV
— Moshe Schwartz (@YWNReporter) November 16, 2023
Taiwan
The bilateral dialogue has gone through thorny issues and has recalled that they persist between both countries iimportant friction pointsdue to economic and commercial issues, due to divergent positions on conflicts such as Russia’s war in Ukraine and Israel’s war in Gaza and, especially, due to Taiwan.
In this area, Biden has renewed his commitment to “maintain the one-China policy” and, according to the statement issued by the White House, he has expressed to Xi his opposition to unilateral changes to the status quo, although it has also asked Beijing for “containment” in his military activities in the Taiwan Strait and has urged him not to interfere in the presidential elections in January on the island.
Xi, for his part, has demanded “concrete actions” from the US. to reaffirm that it does not support Taiwanese independence and has renewed calls for that Washington stop selling weapons to the islandaccording to information given by the Chinese state press about the meeting.
Agreements
The meeting on the margins of the Asia Pacific Cooperation Forum, however, has also served as a kind of reset of relations after a year of turbulence. and has left some specific agreementseven if they are modest, including two that Biden has highlighted.
One is the aforementioned restart after more than a year of interruption of direct military communications, which China interrupted in response to a visit by Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan. This situation, as Biden has recalled, increased the risks that a miscalculation or a communication failure would cause an accident and spark a conflict, and the Democrat has congratulated himself for returning to “open, clear and direct communications.”
The other achievement that the American has pointed out is a tightening in China of the persecution of producers of chemical precursors of fentanyl, the powerful synthetic opioid that is at the epicenter of the US epidemic of addiction and fatal overdoses, as well as those of pill-pressing machine manufacturers. In addition, they will establish a working group to coordinate communications and law enforcement in the fight against drugs.
What Biden has not mentioned in his press conference has been the cooperation agreement announced the day before to combat the climate emergency. And although the two countries have declared their intention to “accelerate” the deployment of renewable energy in this decade for reduce emissions of all greenhouse gasessome experts believe that it lacks elements that make it decisive, such as any announcement by China to stop the spread of coal use.
Likewise, and although Biden has highlighted that they have agreed to create a working group to address the dangers and improve the security of security systems Artificial intelligence, the US has not achieved one of the goals with which it arrived at this summit, which was to start talking to China specifically about limiting the use of AI software in its nuclear arsenal. Beijing has refused to create a specific communication channel to address that issue.
New tone and same tensions
After 12 months in which they have not exchanged a single call, the meeting at the Filoli mansion, north of San Francisco and near Stanford, clearly represents a turning point. And the two leaders, who have had a bilateral of more than two hours surrounded by his main advisors and a another hour’s work lunch more with a smaller group of collaborators, they have shown signs of conciliation from the first moment.
Xi assured the cameras at the start of the meeting that he “firmly believes in promising future of the bilateral relationship” and said: “For two large countries like China and the United States turning their backs on each other is not an option. “Planet Earth is big enough for both countries to be successful, and the success of one is an opportunity for the other.”
It is no less true that tensions persist. When Biden was asked at the press conference if she can trust Xi to fulfill the agreements, she resorted to the saying “trust and verify”and then he used the word again dictator. And in the information about the summit that China has given, it is stated that the Chinese leader has expressed his frustration over investment controls that the US has imposed appealing to national security, the restrictions on the export of advanced technology which has denounced that “it denies the Chinese people their right to development”, as well as sanctions that Beijing says can “harm China’s legitimate interests.”
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