During a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday, President Joe Biden expressed his continued optimism that the United States and China can cooperate. The world anticipates, in my opinion, that China and the United States will play significant roles in tackling global issues like food insecurity and climate change, and that we will be able to cooperate. If that’s what you want, the United States is willing to collaborate with you.
The G-20 Summit, which is being hosted this year on the tourist island of Bali, is concurrent with the meeting between the heads of the two biggest economies in the world. Leaders were anticipated to talk about Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine, which will soon enter its ninth month, and simmering tensions between China and Taiwan, a self-governing island that Xi is keen to annex.
Beijing responded to a visit by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to the island in August by firing missiles into the Taiwan Strait, and the country has been put in an indisputably challenging position by Russia over Ukraine. China has been irritated by the United States’ close ties with Taiwan.
Must Read:
In his Monday message to Xi, Biden stressed that both nations share a responsibility to “manage our differences, prevent competition from becoming anything ever to near conflict, and to find ways to work together on urgent global issues that require our mutual cooperation.” He added, “I’m committed to keeping the lines of communication open between you and me personally, but also our governments across the board.”
History of Biden and Xi: During the conference in Indonesia, Biden hopes to revive his friendship with Xi of China.
Biden is scheduled to meet with Chinese President Xi amid rising trade and Taiwan tensions. The world has reached a turning point, said Xi in response. Where to proceed from here is a topic that not only we but all other nations are considering. The rest of the world anticipates China and the United States to manage their relationship well.
Prior to their meeting on Monday, Biden and Xi had chatted by phone video five times since Biden became president in 2021; they had last met in 2017 in Davos, Switzerland, on one of Biden’s final days as vice president.
U.S. officials indicated that they anticipated a business-like attitude for the summit, which was confined to the two presidents and their closest aides. Biden set aside up to four hours for the talk before the start of a scheduled news conference.
The expectation on the U.S. side was that in a face-to-face conversation, the leaders could set guardrails for the relationship in a way they have not been able to over the phone – especially when it comes to Taiwan. Biden’s administration views the meeting with China, which it considers to be the United States’ main economic rival, as an initial conversation between the leaders.
Although Biden has often stated that the United States would defend Taiwan in the event of an assault, the country has long had a policy of strategic ambiguity over how it would react to the attack on the territory.
In the meeting with Xi, Biden should “make it very clear that the U.S. and Taiwan and other democratic partners are increasingly close, and it would be extremely unwise and damaging for China if it were to undertake an invasion or otherwise coerce Taiwan,” according to Barry Pavel, a defence policy adviser to former Presidents George W.
Bush and Barack Obama on the National Security Council. According to Pavel, vice president and director of the nonprofit RAND Corporation’s National Security Research Division, “something may happen that might have more of an influence in a private meeting than in front of a microphone.”