The meeting between US President Joe Biden and China’s Xi Jinping has generated a dime a thousand comments. We are here to contribute as well by drawing our audience’s attention to the most vital details, as we deem those.
The Chinese leader has pre-determined his arrival in San Francisco primarily as a visit to the summit of APEC leaders (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation), along with an official visit to the United States. In this very order.
Although Biden was compelled to agree to this format, a day before the APEC summit’s official opening, he held detailed talks with Comrade Xi, including in private while walking around the Filoli estate park. Given the headphones with simultaneous interpreting that helped them communicate, that "private conversation" was "on the record" and not so "secret" — though the two leaders seemed to have "agreeed on something" in private… When three know it, all know it, as the saying goes.
These are mere trappings of power, but negotiation contents, as pointed to by phrases dropped by both, have revealed scrutiny of several acute points: urgent slowdown of their countries’ military aggravation around Taiwan; defined boundaries of preferred markets for the two largest world economies; and ways to avert the Opium War 2.0 amid major deliveries of the new drug called "fentanyl" to the United States via Mexico. Let's analyze the topics.
Taiwan. At his meeting with Xi Jinping, Biden made it clear that the US and China had to make sure that rivalry between them "does not veer into conflict" and manage their relationship "responsibly". For the United States in general, and for Biden in particular, a military clash over Taiwan is a white elephant. Instead, the United States wants to keep Taiwan under control and never yield it to China as a political lever for bearing pressure upon Beijing. But as it is today, Washington cannot afford a military conflict against China in the Pacific. The wars in Ukraine and Gaza have been lying heavily on its leaders both financially and organizationally. A third one would bring the Pentagon and the White House to a dead lock. Three wars are too much of a good thing for America in its current state.
Moreover, the US presidential election is just around the corner, and the Democrats hardly need one more debacle. They have a "Ukrainian case" in their hands, which Washington has psyched itself up to write off already, while Israel's prolonged battles against HAMAS with a view to expanding the massacre to wider territories require an ever-growing US involvement, which it hardly needs. The two crises indispose Biden and his team to aggravate things around Taiwan. Biden has taken a pause here with a subsequent public confirmation in his unexpected piece for The Washington Post, released a few hours after his conversation with Xi, where he only writes about Ukraine and Israel, with Taiwan shelved and "forgotten" so far.
And this is good news for Xi. He brightened up hearing this from Biden and confirmed with relief that any potential conflict would entail "unbearable consequences" to both countries. In other words, there should be peace in the Pacific for the short term, which is perhaps the most important thing in the follow-up to the US-China summit.
The second thing was Xi’s verbiage when meeting with Biden. The Chinese press described his speech in detail, no need to retell it here. Let's only highlight a quote, which makes it possible to assert that the second key issue was world trade and who will dominate specific markets. The Chinese are particularly interested in dividing those under the principle "this one for you, this one for us, and this one for rivalry". They are obviously ready to yield Europe to the Americans, while keeping Africa and Asia for themselves, and sustaining "rivalry" in Latin America. And so, Xi has uttered a meaningful phrase: "The world is big enough to accommodate both countries." Let's call it a prerequisite to the Xi-Biden trade and economic pact.
By the way, the US response to this kind of proposal seems to have exceeded all the possible limits — the Americans are delighted! Don't you believe? Consider the two events that occurred during Xi's visit. First and most important one is that the APEC summit hall saw Biden — right in the presence of all the participants and under their surprised eye — suddenly rush to Xi, hug him by the shoulder and shake his hand, like a junior partner or a supplicant, that is the word. Why didn't he just try to kiss him! Defiant of everyone else in the room. Publicly. A day after their private talks. Maybe Joe Biden has finally got an insight of a certain essential thing?
And the second vital circumstance. If we turn the clock back to the day before that, we will recollect an event that took place in San Francisco and impressed both the Biden administration and POTUS personally: the leading US business figures greeted the Chinese leader with a standing ovation at a dinner party arranged to honor him! While journalists wondered why Xi and Biden didn't have a joint press conference as the latter appeared before the press alone, the "captains of economy" were swarming into a dinner party with the Chinese guest. The US-China Business Council and the National Committee on US-China Relations sold 400 tickets for the venue worth $40,000 per meal, but there still were not enough seats, with dozens of "stowaways" forced to stay outside the hall. Meanwhile, the "lucky devils" were taking photos with comrade Xi, including Elon Musk (Tesla), Tim Cook (Apple), Ray Dalio (Bridgewater Associates), CEOs of NIKE, Pfizer, Qualcomm, Mastercard and all the others interested in the Chinese market... America’s largest capitalists lined up for a photo with the planet’s chief communist because behind his back there are one and a half billion potential consumers of their commodity mass! Convergence in its purest form…
As the local press noted, this was a demonstration of big business's disagreement with the US authorities’ anti-Chinese strategy which brought the two major global economies to a head-on clash. The owners and top managers of the world's leading companies gave the Chinese guest a standing ovation and impressed Team Biden so much that the next day he paid his personal courtship to Comrade Xi, demonstrating to the entire APEC summit who was the No. 1 person in the hall.
You bet! Thanks to China, American businesses raise hundreds of billions of dollars — last year the sides’ trade turnover was around $700 billion. And this is what Xi said at the dinner: "If we regard each other as the biggest rival, the most significant geopolitical challenge and an ever-pressing threat, it will inevitably lead to wrong policies, wrong actions and wrong results. China is willing to be a partner and friend of the United States… Right now, there are changes the likes of which we haven’t seen for 100 years, and the future now depends on Washington and Beijing – our interaction or our confrontation." What do you think businesspeople would choose? So, peace in the Pacific means new hundreds of billions in profits, and no one in their right mind will fling away a chance like that, given the US economic crisis phenomena. Business is going to slow down Biden’s advance towards a military aggravation with China.
And, finally, the third agenda issue that greatly worries the Americans — both the president himself and his voters — is fentanyl, the drug flowing into the United States from China through Mexico. By and large, America has been hit by a boomerang of "opium wars" that shocked PRC’s people and economy back in the XIX century. Local media claim that the massive export of fentanyl from China has caused hundreds of thousands of deaths and trillions of dollars in economic loss. The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has seized over 200 kg of fentanyl precursors, which is enough to kill 25 million people.
Further to Xi Jinping's visit to San Francisco, there is another conclusion apart from statements that a war between the US and China is not a matter of the near future, at least. The United States is opening a new old chapter in its "games with China," the one named after henry Kissinger, whom said in the early 1970s that US relations with the USSR and China separately should be stronger than their bilateral ones, being the only way for the US to retain leadership in international affairs. Biden's curtsey to Xi in front of the APEC summit’s surprised and admiring audience might be deemed as a pivot to Kissinger’s formula.
And one more observation to wrap it all up. Why did Biden call Xi "dictator" again? In his mouth this term seems irrelevant to China’s governance system. Otherwise, he would have been true to himself and said Xi was an autocrat, not dictator. Isn’t it about Xi’s everlasting manner to be tough and clear in articulating his interests when at negotiating with the Americans? They are not used to a treatment like that — so Biden calls Xi a "dictator" for "dictating his demands." And for today, the latter has achieved the key thing — peace in the Pacific for the short term.
