Biden and Che meet and agree on "calm and dialogue"
China and the United States are competing, not battling
Xi Jinping seeks to prove that he can manage the relationship with the United States as the Communist Party Congress approaches at the end of 2022.
The Biden administration's rhetoric on China indicates the extent of the delicate balancing act that the US administration is implementing when it comes to the relationship with the great powers.
Sullivan said there was a real exchange of views between the two leaders.
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A year ago, while the world was groaning under the weight of the “Corona” pandemic, the United States and China did not fail to cooperate to combat the pandemic, but rather unleashed a level of differences that the world had not witnessed in half a century, to the point that fears spread about the possibility of war between them.
At the end of October 2020, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the US Forces, General Mark Milley, felt compelled to contact his Chinese counterpart, General Li Zushing, to convey to him a message that the United States would not launch the attack, according to General Milley's testimony last September.
Against all this background, Washington and Beijing partnered to achieve a primary goal last Monday night in a hypothetical meeting of US Presidents Joe Biden and Chinese Xi Jinping, with the aim of achieving a little stability in US-China relations, in an attempt to prevent further deterioration. "I believe it is our responsibility, as leaders in China and the United States, to ensure that competition between our two countries does not turn into conflict, whether intentionally or unintentionally," Biden told his counterpart Che, in remarks during the meeting in the Roosevelt Room of the White House at the start of the meeting.
President Xi said something similar at the meeting, which was the first face-to-face meeting between the two presidents since Biden entered the White House. "Stable and firm relations between the United States and China are required for the development of our two countries and for the protection of the global climate, and make it more stable and peaceful," Xi added. right to work together.”
Experts agree that Monday's meeting, which was marked by respect and frankness between the two leaders, put a difficult relationship back on a much-needed track.
It was a confrontation through public denunciation,” said Ryan Haas, a scholar at the John Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution at the Brookings Institution. ", stressing that it gave it stability and a halt to escalation.
corporate responsibility
The tone of the lengthy meeting, which lasted for about three and a half hours, was "good and participatory," according to one US official, describing how the two leaders got to know each other after spending several hours of talks.
President Xi referred to Biden as the "old friend" and the two men exchanged stories, and talked about their previous conversations in one of the meetings without writing the minutes of the session, and US National Security Adviser Jack Sullivan said at the Brookings session, "There is a real exchange of views," Sullivan added, "Knows The two men weighed the relationship between their countries and will work together to shoulder this responsibility.”
The two leaders pledged to continue the meetings.
Mr. Hass said this meeting may establish a new type of meeting where the two leaders meet first to identify the main issues, and then delegate senior officials to follow up on them, and then meet again to consolidate what has been achieved.
The two leaders took advantage of this meeting to express the differences between their countries, and to focus on the places that pose the greatest risks to the relationship between the two countries, according to officials from both sides.
Biden directed some criticism of China, while Che condemned the advanced military cooperation between the United States and countries neighboring China, referring to the Quartet countries, namely Australia, India, Japan, in addition to the United States, noting that such gatherings "involve real disasters for the world." .
The American Balance Process
The announcement of the sudden climate deal between the two countries last week raised the hopes of environmentalists that Monday's meeting will yield additional successes.
But the virtual meeting between the two parties focused more on the intense competition between the two countries and not any other tangible measures, a senior administration official said after the meeting.
In addition, the two sides' priorities came, as President Biden focused on China's escalating threats against Taiwan, officials said, while President Xi wanted to make progress in raising tariffs on Chinese goods, which were imposed during the administration of former President Donald Trump. But President Biden has not offered any tariff relief that the Chinese leader has demanded.
In fact, the Biden administration's rhetoric on China indicates how delicately the administration has been balancing when it comes to its relationship with the great powers. On the one hand, Biden's repeated references reflect the extent of the "tough competition" with China. “Using the word (competition) by the Biden administration is not a political tactic,” said David Shambaugh, director of the China program at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Relations, in response to Republican criticism. “It is an intellectual and political construct of how the United States frames the relationship with China.” . At the same time, additional calls for cooperation when possible and in the interest of both parties indicate pragmatism in dealing with China.
This view is recognized “on the other hand,” given that China is the second largest economy in the world and has trade and investment relations with many strategic and basic regions in the world, which sometimes surpass the United States, which is characterized by a rapidly expanding military power and an escalating nuclear arsenal. With her skillfully and realistically.
The need for “new mechanisms”
From the point of view of some Chinese experts and some officials in the US administration, this means that the United States cannot deal with China in the same way that former President Ronald Reagan dealt with the collapsed Soviet Union in the eighties of the last century, as some Cold War theorists say new.
"We have the Internet now, our supply chains are now intertwined, and it's now a very different environment than it was during the Cold War, so we can't handle the challenge," said Emily de la Bruyere, a senior researcher in the China program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington. Which China shapes by going back to the past to find a way. We need to find new mechanisms to deal with a new situation.”
From the point of view of China's domestic politics, Xi is seeking to prove that he can manage the relationship with the United States as the Communist Party Congress approaches at the end of 2022, when he intends to secure a third term as China's leader, experts say.
"Che does not want the possibility of war or the United States imposing harsh sanctions against China, or putting more Chinese companies on the sanctions list, but Beijing wants to maintain stability," said Scott Kennedy, a senior advisor and expert on China economic policy at the Center for Strategic and International Relations. Things are as they are.”
• Given that China is the second largest economy in the world, and it has trade and investment relations with many strategic and basic regions in the world, which sometimes surpass the United States, which is characterized by a rapidly expanding military power and an escalating nuclear arsenal, it must engage with it skillfully and realistically.
Anne Scott Tyson - Howard LaFrancha ■ Al-Monitor columnists
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