President Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping take a walk at the Filoli estate in Woodside, California (Photo: New York Times).
The summit between President Joe Biden and President Xi Jinping produced some positive results, but it remains to be seen how the implementation will actually unfold in the future.
After a meeting that lasted more than four hours on November 15, Mr. Biden and Mr. Xi left the negotiating table with what they could both consider personal victories, even though they were only low-hanging fruit in the US-China relationship.
Speaking afterwards, the US President said that the talks with Mr. Xi included "the most productive and constructive conversations we have ever had." Mr. Biden said Mr. Xi agreed to maintain communication between the two countries and that the two leaders could "pick up the phone and call each other directly."
Meanwhile, Mr. Tap affirmed that "the Earth is big enough" for both powers, while emphasizing that both the US and China are very different but "can completely overcome the differences".
"Both leaders clearly want to build a solid foundation for US-China relations to avoid escalation and conflict," Daniel Sneider, lecturer in Asian Studies at Stanford University (USA), told Dan Tri reporter.
Two major “victories” for Mr. Biden
Mr. Sneider said that the most important result of the meeting on November 15 was that Washington and Beijing agreed to resume high-level military dialogue, which had been cut off after the visit to Taiwan by then-US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Without such a line of communication, any incident between the two militaries could spark further conflict, as the US faces two crises simultaneously in Ukraine and the Gaza Strip, while China needs to focus on steering its domestic economy .
In return, the US removed the Institute of Forensic Science under the Chinese Ministry of Public Security from its trade sanctions list.
Scene of the meeting between Mr. Biden and Mr. Tap in Woodside, California on November 15 (Photo: AFP).
In addition to the above two agreements, the US and China also reached a number of other small but generally positive commitments, such as agreeing to discuss controlling risks from artificial intelligence, increasing the number of direct flights between the two countries, and initiating discussions on extending the US-China science and technology cooperation agreement.
"We have to be honest that the above results are probably smaller than what is usually seen after other major summits," Zack Cooper, a scholar studying US-China competition at the American Enterprise Institute AEI, told Dan Tri reporter.
China has agreed to resume high-level military dialogue, but that does not guarantee that subsequent exchanges will be productive, Cooper said.
And if you go back in time, China has made similar commitments to control fentanyl, both under President Obama and President Trump, but the problem still exists today.
Still, Mr. Biden and the White House can point to this as progress in the complex relationship with China ahead of a difficult election in 2024.
Victory for Mr. Tap
"Mr. Xi came to San Francisco with two missions: Stabilizing relations with the US to be able to solve domestic problems and restoring international investors' confidence in the Chinese economy," Mr. Daniel Russel, Vice President of the Asia Society Policy Institute on International Security and Diplomacy, told Dan Tri reporter.
The Chinese president had the opportunity to fulfill both of those priorities. Meeting with Mr. Biden, Mr. Xi affirmed that China has no intention of surpassing or replacing the United States, and at the same time asked the United States to abandon its intention to contain China.
On the Taiwan issue, Xi reiterated that the US should stop supporting the island's independence and providing weapons. Biden then took the action that China needed to see happen, which was to reaffirm the US's stance on the "One China" policy.
Xi Jinping's most important "victory" in San Francisco was probably the warm welcome from the US. Xi Jinping was also able to get Biden to reaffirm his commitment to the Taiwan issue (Photo: AFP/Getty).
Meeting with the US business community, Mr. Tap emphasized that China remains an attractive investment destination, in the context that foreign investment in the country of a billion people recently decreased for the first time since 1998.
“We remain committed to pursuing development with our doors always open,” Xi said, according to Xinhua . “China has become synonymous with the best investment destination, and the ‘next China’ is still China.”
How effective Mr. Xi’s call for investment will be remains to be seen. Zhang Lei, a Chinese businessman whose company is listed on the NASDAQ, said high-level meetings like the one between Mr. Biden and Mr. Xi could help reassure companies that are hesitant to invest in China.
“Confrontation doesn’t work,” he told the AP . “You don’t make money from confrontation.”
Perhaps Xi’s most important “victory” in San Francisco is the diplomatic status it has received from the United States. When Chinese people watch the meeting, what they will most likely see is Biden warmly welcoming Xi at the entrance to the Filoli estate.
Xinhua devoted an article to the moment Mr. Biden showed Mr. Xi a photo taken 38 years ago, during his first visit to the US.
“Do you know this young man?” Mr. Biden asked, receiving a confirming answer from Mr. Xi.
"You don't look like you've changed a bit," the US president joked, drawing laughter before starting a luncheon with the Chinese president.
A happy personal moment between the two leaders: US President Joe Biden shows Chinese President Xi Jinping a photo taken 38 years ago, during his first visit to the US (Photo: Xinhua).
Big challenges ahead
Even before the visit, experts did not expect any major breakthroughs from this summit. The results achieved after November 15 did not touch on the most complicated issues in US-China relations, showing that the two sides still have many differences.
Mr. Cooper is among those concerned that the US and China still do not understand each other and that this relationship will face challenges ahead of the election on the island of Taiwan and the US presidential election in 2024, or before unexpected developments such as the balloon incident earlier this year.
While Mr. Xi wants to frame the relationship as mutually beneficial cooperation and peaceful coexistence, Mr. Biden asserts that the US will still "compete vigorously" with China, according to Mr. Cooper.
“I sense that the Chinese side is coming to the realization that there is little chance of lasting improvement in the US-China relationship because the two countries have very different visions,” Cooper said. “So until there is greater consensus, both sides will have to accept that the best thing to do is probably to manage the relationship, not actually improve it.”
Mr. Russel of the Asia Society also said that the meeting on November 15 would not change the basic shape of the US-China competitive relationship, but the tone of the parties had changed in a positive direction.
"After a year of silence from Washington, it is a big step forward for Xi to sit down and talk directly with Biden about how the two countries will manage the relationship in the coming year," said Mr. Russel.
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