Stakes rising in Biden-Xi showdown
Analysts say leaders will push to clarify positions on issues
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — Last November, President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping emerged from a virtual meeting determined to chart a new path that would prevent the two superpowers from spiraling into an open conflict.
But a year later, as the two presidents prepare to meet in person for the first time since Biden took office, Washington and Beijing remain in a diplomatic and economic standoff.
On Monday, Biden and Xi will meet on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit and again try to repair the world’s most important bilateral relationship.
The two leaders are likely to offer a familiar refrain about prioritizing stability as they hash out their differences, analysts say. China and the U.S. have clashed over trade, climate change, human rights and Beijing’s tacit support for Russia’s war in Ukraine.
The two superpowers are also fundamentally at odds over Taiwan. Disputes over the status of the island’s democracy have driven much of the recent enmity between China and the U.S.
China views Taiwan as a renegade province that it wants to reclaim, a prospect that has taken on urgency as Xi has moved into a more aggressive stance in military action and rhetoric toward eventual unification.
The U.S. acknowledges China’s position without endorsing it.
But Biden has said on four occasions that the U.S. would defend Taiwan militarily if China attacked — a statement that conflicts with Washington’s long-standing policy of remaining silent about what it might do in the case of a Chinese attack. Relations between the U.S. and China worsened in August after U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan, which Beijing viewed as an offense against its claims of sovereignty.
In response, China’s military launched missile tests, warships and planes around Taiwan for several days, imposed sanctions on Pelosi and cut off all communication
with the U.S. on issues as diverse as military relations and climate change.
“It’s a very good development; they are at least talking,” said Minxin Pei, a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College in California. “What’s most likely to happen is they agree to resume some discussions on things.”
Even on Taiwan, there is “at least some common ground” between the two countries, Pei added: “They have a lot of differences, but one thing they don’t want to see is a direct conflict.”
White House officials stressed there’s no expectation
that Biden’s meeting with Xi will yield any progress. The two presidents have no plans to issue a joint statement following the meeting, administration officials said, underscoring just how little has changed since Biden and Xi attempted to set the tone of their relationship a year ago.
The meeting is instead a chance for Biden to “build a floor for the relationship and ensure that there are rules of the road that bound our competition,” a senior administration official told reporters last week.
Asked whether he would tell Xi the U.S. would defend Taiwan in the face of
Chinese aggression, Biden said: “I’m going to have that conversation with him.”
Something as basic as an agreement that the trajectory of the U.S.-China relationship is untenable would be a success, said Jude Blanchette, chair of China studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
“Both sides likely see the other’s desire to ‘stabilize’ the relationship as more tactical than substantive, given the deep levels of distrust that now exist,” Blanchette said. “Beijing thinks the U.S. wants to simply normalize the level of hostility it thinks the U.S. is showing towards it, and for its part, the U.S. thinks Beijing’s talk of ‘stability’ is just a stall tactic.”
For Biden, who revels in face-to-face diplomacy, the meeting is a chance to lay out his views in a way that’s only been possible over videoconferences until now, said Andrew Small, a senior fellow with the German Marshall Fund’s Asia Program.
Biden has held five calls or videoconference meetings with Xi since taking office, but he often recalls his time spent with the Chinese leader when both men served as vice president and toured their respective countries together.
The meeting is a chance to tap into that history “to really talk about strategic priorities, their differences, clarify positions and transact at least on a limited number of issues” such as food security, Small said.
Senior administration officials said Biden would seek China’s help on North Korea over its latest round of ballistic missile launches. Biden will also try to coax China to join a global push to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, U.S. officials said.
China has refused to condemn Moscow’s assault, but Biden administration officials pointed to Xi’s comments opposing the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine in a joint statement with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz during a recent visit to Beijing.
“The G-20 is a good stage for both Washington and Beijing to be able to say that although the two sides’ rivalry is intensifying, it will be managed responsibly, and it will still be possible to deal with each other in a few areas of global concern,” Small said.