Summit a huge success for Xi

President’s meeting with Biden is a major diplomatic victory, hints at future

President Xi Jinping’s visit to the United States last month for a summit meeting with his US counterpart Joe Biden, and to attend the 2023 APEC Economic Leaders’ Meeting, has turned out to be a major success for China’s diplomacy.

Xi delivered three key speeches during his stay in San Francisco — an address at the Welcome Dinner by Friendly Organizations in the United States, a written speech at the APEC CEO Summit, and one at the 30th APEC Economic Leaders’ Meeting.

For me, his speech at the dinner hosted by influential entities such as the National Committee on USChina Relations, US-China Business Council, Asia Society, Council on Foreign Relations, and US Chamber of Commerce was his most salient and personal one. Xi received standing ovation during the gala receptioncum-banquet attended by US business elites.

The speech had an emotional touch to it, such as when Xi recalled his “unforgettable first face-to-face contact with the Americans” while staying with the Dvorchak family in Iowa back in 1985 when he was a county leader in Hebei province.

In his speech, Xi underlined that 158 years ago, a large number of Chinese workers journeyed to the US to build the first transcontinental railroad and established the first Chinatown in the Western Hemisphere.

I visited San Francisco with a Macao media delegation over two decades ago, and I liked the city much more, for instance, than Las Vegas. Its distinct Chinese cultural factors and multiculturalism reminded me, to a certain extent, of Macao.

Xi also gave his high-powered audience a brief history lesson by pointing out that “our two countries initiated together with others the San Francisco Conference (AprilJune 1945), which helped found the United Nations, and China was the first country to sign the UN Charter”, adding that “starting from San

Francisco, the post-war international order was established”.

The president, whose previous visit to the US took place six years ago, also noted that “the future of China-US relations will be created by our peoples”.

“The world needs China and the United States to work together for a better future,” Xi said.

I could not agree more. One can only hope that Brussels will prick up its ears. The EU, which includes Germany as the world’s number four economic power, needs to work together with China as well for our troubled planet’s better future.

In a shocking case of political mistiming, around the time Xi was visiting the US, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen urged the EU’s 27 member states in two recent speeches in Berlin to get moving with the “de-risking” of economic ties with China or prepare for their businesses to be “steamrollered by unfair Chinese competition”.

Frankly, I am tired of hearing Western politicians uttering, ad nauseam, their hackneyed “de-risking” narrative. I am sure that entrepreneurs know much better than politicians how to protect against business risks by re- and de-risking their investments periodically.

Xi stressed that just as mutual respect is a basic code of behavior for individuals, it is fundamental for China-US relations. I am convinced that the lack of mutual respect between countries with different political, economic, social, and cultural value systems is one of the main reasons for the deplorable state that international relations are in right now. The other main problem is that the West continues with its erroneous attempt to Westernize the rest of the world, following its centuries-long colonization drive that only ended in the 1970s. Its efforts include trying to impose its political, cultural, and social value systems on countries that have their own going back hundreds or even thousands of years.

Xi underlined that he and Biden have agreed to promote dialogue and cooperation, in the spirit of mutual respect, in areas including people-to-people exchanges, education, science and technology, military contacts, law enforcement, and artificial intelligence. I am cautiously optimistic that his appeal for the renewal of amity between the world’s two most important countries politically and economically will start to bear fruit before long. Where there is a will there is a way. What matters most, as always, is whether there is a will.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who accompanied Xi on his trip, expounded on it by saying that the summit has been able to establish the “San Francisco Vision” orientated toward the future, but added that “there are still many deepseated and structural problems, and many risks and challenges that need to be addressed jointly”.

Well, I am convinced that pragmatic realism lays the most solid foundation for constructive politics, both nationally and internationally.