Roving Periscope: The US tries to woo China back from Russia; Biden-Xi may meet in Nov
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: As bilateral tensions between the US and China flow and ebb on multiple issues, President Joe Biden may meet his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in San Francisco in November.
San Francisco will host an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit in November. President Xi Jinping, who recently skipped the G-20 Summit in New Delhi, may also attend it, the media reported, adding they could meet on the sidelines of this event.
The White House is making plans for a face-to-face meeting between leaders of the two largest economies in San Francisco next month as the two countries seek to stabilize troubled relations, the Washington Post reported on Thursday.
The US-China bilateral ties have remained strained in recent years because of a number of issues including Taiwan, the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, allegations of spying, human rights matters, and trade tariffs.
But the reason behind the two Presidents’ likely meeting on the sidelines of the APEC event may not exactly be bilateral relations alone. The ongoing Russian war in Ukraine has created rifts among some of the NATO members also. If the US could woo back China from supporting Russia, or at least ‘neutralize’ Beijing, Moscow could end the Ukraine war.
Also, President Biden, who has thrown his hat in next year’s elections for a second term, is also looking at ‘normalizing’ relations with China as his ‘achievement.’
However, Xi himself is facing several problems at home, including in the Chinese Communist Party that he heads. Since 2020, he has rarely ventured out of the country fearing a coup, especially after a brief mutiny by the Wagner militia against Russian President Vladimir Putin in June.
Citing senior unidentified US officials, the WaPo said the possibility of a meeting between the two Presidents was “pretty firm.”
“We are beginning the process” of planning, the official told the newspaper.
The Chinese embassy in Washington did not comment specifically on the newspaper report. A spokesperson of the embassy said, in an emailed statement, that the two countries remained in communication and needed to expand “good faith” cooperation.
The White House did not have an immediate comment.
The Biden-Xi meeting would follow other high-level engagements between the two countries in recent months that have seen visits from US officials to China, such as Secretary of State Antony Blinken in June, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen in July, and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo in August.
More recently, Secretary Blinken met Chinese Vice President Han Zheng in New York and US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan met Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Li in Malta.
Presidents Biden and Xi had last met on the sidelines of the G-20 Summit in Indonesia in November 2022. It was their first in-person meeting since Biden became US President in January 2021. They previously had five exchanges by phone and video conference after Biden took office.
In September, China’s top security agency hinted that any meeting between Xi and Biden would depend on the US “showing sufficient sincerity.”
Top US officials like Raimondo and Yellen have recently said the United States did not want to decouple from China, but Beijing has expressed concern over Washington’s approval of arms sales and military financing to Taiwan.
