- Chinese President Xi Jinping began his first visit to the United States in six years on Tuesday.
- Xi is on his first visit to the U.S. since 2017. He is due to meet Biden at an undisclosed location in the San Francisco Bay Area and then attend the annual summit of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation.
- Xi’s summit with Biden will be the first face-to-face meeting between the U.S. and Chinese leaders in a year and has been billed by U.S. officials as an opportunity to reduce friction in what many see as the world’s most dangerous rivalry.
- Earlier, Biden said he aimed to improve the relationship with China after a period of strained ties and would seek to resume normal communications between the two superpowers,
Chinese President Xi Jinping reached the United States on Tuesday afternoon (local time) in order to participate in a summit with his US counterpart Jo Biden. In addition, the Chinese president will also attend the 30th APEC Economic Leaders’ Meeting from November 14 to 17, as per the media reports. Notably, this is the Chinese leader’s first trip to the US in six years as the relationship between the two nations is not said to be very cordial.
For their first meeting in a year, the presidents of the two largest economies in the world, Joe Biden and Xi Jinping, will meet in California on Wednesday to discuss trade, Taiwan, and the tenuous relationship between the US and China. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement the leaders would discuss the “continued importance of maintaining open lines of communication” and how they “can continue to responsibly manage competition and work together where our interests align, particularly on transnational challenges that affect the international community.”
It is worth mentioning here that the meeting between Biden and Jinping has great significance, as the two leaders have not met since the G20 in 2022, and because of their lack of agreement concerning current global conflicts, particularly the Ukraine war.
Biden’s relationship with his Chinese counterpart is already strained. At the G20 meeting, Biden spoke with Jinping about China’s position on Taiwan, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the US-China trade relationship which has been extremely rocky. These issues are all expected to be on the agenda.
According to reports, Biden’s present stance on China, which seeks to limit China’s diplomatic influence and slow down its economic expansion while upholding US geopolitical primacy, is unlikely to shift much. However, the think tank Atlantic Council believes that the American people will support Biden if he continues to have dialogue with China.
The relationship between the two nations has been mostly complex, and at times, strenuous since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the retreat of the government of the Republic of China to Taiwan in 1949. Since then, the two countries have experienced periods of tension and cooperation over issues including trade, climate change, and Taiwan. These two vast and complicated countries have found common ground on issues of trade and investment, but key issues remain unresolved, and the potential for troubling divergence is real as China becomes an economic powerhouse, a military force in Asia, and a potential rival to US hegemony.
(With inputs from agencies)
