People familiar with the matter said that White House officials are preparing for a virtual meeting between President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping, which they hope will show the world that Washington can manage the relationship between the two superpowers responsibly.
The early aggressive diplomacy of the Biden administration with China disturbed allies. US officials believe that direct contact with Xi Jinping is the best way to prevent the relationship between the world’s two largest economies from spiraling into conflict.
In view of China’s domestic COVID restrictions and Xi Jinping’s reluctance to travel, two sources familiar with the matter said that Washington’s goal is to hold a video conference call between Biden and Xi in November, but plans are still under discussion.
They said that after consulting with allies, they may not formulate an agenda, including the G-20 summit in Rome next week and the subsequent United Nations climate conference in Glasgow.
Biden will attend these two forums. Xi Jinping, who has not left China since the beginning of the pandemic, is not expected to travel.
Although the stakes in the Biden-Xi meeting are high — Washington and Beijing have been arguing from the origin of the pandemic to China’s expanding nuclear arsenal — Biden’s team has so far low expectations for specific results and has declined to disclose specifics. what’s the result. The agenda may include.
A senior government official said: “We are still planning the details of the virtual bilateral meeting. There is nothing to preview at this time.”
A source familiar with the current plan, who asked not to be named, said that the meeting itself was a major achievement, and hoped that it would bring stability to what Washington calls long-term strategic competition.
A senior U.S. government official said at the time that the two sides will hold talks in Switzerland this month and agreed to hold a virtual meeting before the end of the year. Through direct communication at the leadership level, the goal is to push the relationship between the two countries in a more “constructive direction.”
“We think it is particularly important for leaders to play more roles in managing this relationship,” the official said.
Susan Thornton, a former senior State Department official who is currently the Brookings Institution’s Asian Affairs Officer, said that this meeting can help repair communication gaps and lay the foundation for a relationship that is still in a “declining downward spiral.”
“This is not the real result, but it can prevent things from getting worse,” she said.
In the trade war during the administration of former President Donald Trump, Chinese officials sought an advantage by implying that American officials were those seeking negotiations. Now, Biden officials, who are trying to show that the United States is a responsible power, have changed the script and told reporters after Biden and Xi Jinping had a phone call on September 9 that Biden initiated an interaction.
Unlike Trump’s stand-alone approach to China’s policy, Biden puts his strategy on mobilizing allies and partners in Europe and Asia to increase its influence on Beijing.
Former EU ambassador to Washington, David O’Sullivan, told Reuters that European allies have been “very anxious” because of improper management of US-China relations. This was evident in the intense public exchanges at the high-level diplomatic conference in Alaska in March. Delay them into conflict.
“These are the messages that people are sending to this government. I think they understand this, and I think this may be one of the reasons they extended a helping hand (to China),” he said.
A few days after the Alaska meeting, US Secretary of State Anthony Brinken found it necessary to emphasize in Brussels that the United States would not force any NATO allies to choose sides between Washington and Beijing.
An Asian diplomat said, “Everyone around the world is a little bit anxious about where the US-China relationship will go after Alaska.”
For Xi Jinping, the words of relaxation are also reasonable. He hopes that the Beijing Winter Olympics and other important national events will be smooth sailing in February next year, and he will receive an unprecedented third party chairmanship at the CCP Congress. .
“Not destroying any of them means you have to establish some kind of management relationship between the United States and China,” the diplomat told Reuters. “In the 12 months that are actually very important to Xi Jinping in the country, you have minimized the risk of conflict.”
What remains unresolved in the Beijing Olympics is Washington accusing China of “genocide” Muslims in its Xinjiang region, although Biden officials have so far opposed calls by human rights organizations and US lawmakers to diplomatically boycott the event.
Nonetheless, due to a large number of differences, US officials insisted that the “thawing” of the relationship was wrong.
The government recently expressed concern about the evidence of China’s nuclear construction and its work on hypersonic missiles, and accused China of intensifying military activities to intimidate democratic Taiwan.
On Wednesday, Biden’s nominated ambassador to China, Nicholas Burns, called China “the most dangerous competitor” for Washington and said the United States needs to work closely with allies.
“We have partners who believe in us, but the Chinese really don’t believe it,” he said. “I think President Biden is trying to emphasize that we need to… (with) our treaty allies, our defense partners, very closely.”
