By The Diplomat | Created at 2024-11-18 15:46:35 | Updated at 2024-11-23 10:23:19
4 days ago
In what is likely to be their last exchange, Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Joe Biden met on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Lima, Peru, on November 16. Biden will be leaving office on January 20, 2025, to be replaced by his predecessor, Donald Trump.
Given the context, Biden’s third meeting with Xi was less about new progress – initiatives launched under a lame duck president have little value – and more about positioning for the transition. Biden made the case for continuing his administration’s China strategy, while Xi was trying to set baselines ahead of Trump’s inauguration. As China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson put it, the final Biden-Xi meeting “reviewed the journey of China-U.S. relations over the past four years, and drew experiences and inspirations from it.”
Xi’s overall conclusion was that “over the past four years, China-U.S. relations have gone through ups and downs, but the two sides have also been engaged in dialogue and cooperation. The relationship has remained stable on the whole.” He pointed to the “more than 20 communication mechanisms” that have been either newly established or resurrected since 2021 “in such areas as diplomacy, security, economy, trade, fiscal affairs, finance, military, counternarcotics, law enforcement, agriculture, climate change, and people-to-people exchange.”
He also included a warning, one often repeated by China but with special resonance in the delicate post-election transition period for the United States: “A new Cold War should not be fought and cannot be won. Containing China is unwise, unacceptable and bound to fail.”
Both Biden and Xi sought to portray China-U.S. relations as making positive progress over the past four years, while also separately insisting that their governments had properly defended national interests. According to China’s readout, the presidents “spoke positively about the important role of China-U.S. strategic communication, regular contact between the diplomatic and security teams, and dialogue mechanisms on mil-to-mil relations, economic and trade ties, and financial issues.”
For his part, Biden defended his administration’s foreign policy approach of “investment in sources of strength at home and alignment with partners and allies around the world,” even while “maintain[ing] open channels of communication with [China] to manage competition responsibly and prevent it from veering into conflict or confrontation.” He particularly stressed the value of China-U.S. cooperation on counternarcotics, military-to-military communication, and the risks of artificial intelligence (AI). The biggest news to come out of the meeting was a new commitment by both sides “to maintain human control over the decision to use nuclear weapons.”
According to Beijing, Biden and Xi “agreed to maintain the momentum in communication and strengthen macroeconomic policy coordination.” It’s unclear what value those promises have post-January 20, however. Incoming presidents generally remake the structure of China-U.S. dialogues; Trump’s first term saw ambitious plans for four new regular dialogues, all of which fell apart within a year.
Notably, Senator Marco Rubio, Trump’s pick for secretary of state, was sanctioned by Beijing back in 2020, which bars him from traveling to China for meetings. Biden’s secretary of state, Antony Blinken, made trips to China in 2023 and 2024.
Beyond generally staking out their respective perspectives on the relationship, Biden and Xi discussed specific issues as well. On Taiwan, China is attempting (without much success thus far) to drive a wedge between the United States and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government. Xi urged Washington to “see clearly the true nature of Lai Ching-te and the DPP authorities.” Notably, Xi not only called for the United States to “unequivocally oppose ‘Taiwan independence’” but outright demanded that Washington “support China’s peaceful reunification.”
Meanwhile, Biden “reiterated that the United States opposes any unilateral changes to the status quo from either side. He also called for “cross-Strait differences to be resolved by peaceful means,” and criticized China’s “destabilizing… military activity around Taiwan.”
In the South China Sea, China has been involved in several minor clashes with the Philippines, a U.S. treaty ally, over disputed reefs. Xi warned that “the United States should not get involved in bilateral disputes over relevant islands and reefs of Nansha Qundao [the Spratly Islands], nor should it aid or abet the impulsion to make provocations.” The maritime disputes were not an area of much emphasis for Biden, however, getting only one mention (lumped together with the East China Sea) using boilerplate language about “the United States’ commitment to upholding international law and freedom of navigation, overflight, and peace and stability.”
On the economic front, China’s biggest priority continues to be overcoming the United States’ export controls and other restrictions on access to technology. “President Xi noted that the Chinese people’s right to development is not to be deprived of or ignored,” the Chinese readout stated.
In fact, the “right to development” – meaning, in this context, guaranteeing China’s access to cutting-edge technology to enable its push to develop sectors like semiconductors and artificial intelligence – is one of China’s “red lines,” alongside “the Taiwan question,” China’s “path and system,” and “democracy and human rights.” On these four points, Xi warned, China “must not be challenged.”
Biden was not swayed. He “emphasized that the United States will continue to take necessary actions to prevent advanced U.S. technologies from being used to undermine the national security of the United States or its partners.”
Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said that “there was nothing surprising about President Xi raising his concerns about” export controls, and said such objections would have little impact: “[W]e will continue to support that until the end of this term, and we will continue to advocate to the next team that they carry forward with this policy.” Given that the export control policy began under Trump’s first term, it seems likely to continue throughout his second.
While Sullivan refused to speculate much about the incoming administration’s policies, he did note that there may be a good amount of continuity. “[T]here’s a lot that we’re doing, both with respect to the U.S.-China relationship, but also with respect to our alliances, with respect to other partners here at APEC and the G20 that will be carried forward in the natural course of things,” he predicted.
Meanwhile, Xi repeatedly stressed that China’s positions are “unchanged.” With a massive political change underway in the United States, Beijing is attempting to present China as a beacon of stability – and laying the groundwork for blaming the Trump administration should relations worsen next year.
