Xi Jinping – The Future of Security and Innovation: Addressing the Human Rights Anomalies in a World Divided by China and Russia
A day ahead of meeting Xi, Biden underscored “the United States will compete vigorously with (China) and speak out regarding (China’s) human rights abuses, while keeping lines of communication open and ensuring competition does not veer into conflict.”
The document, required by Congress, comes 21 months into Biden’s term. Over the course of the president’s tenure, there has been an evidence of the strategy focusing on rebuilding global partnerships and Countering China and Russia.
Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, told reporters the strategy made it clear the White House wasn’t looking at the world solely through strategic competition.
“We will not leave our future vulnerable to the whims of those who do not share our vision for a world that is free, open, prosperous, and secure,” he goes on. “As the world continues to navigate the lingering impacts of the pandemic and global economic uncertainty, there is no nation better positioned to lead with strength and purpose than the United States of America.”
“Russia poses an immediate threat to the free and open international system, recklessly flouting the basic laws of the international order today, as its brutal war of aggression against Ukraine has shown,” the document reads. China is the sole competitor with both intent and technological power to cause a change in the international order.
This decade is crucial for defining the terms of competition and for getting ahead of massive challenges, if we are to keep up with them.
Xi Jinping defended his hard-line reign on Sunday, presenting himself to a congress of China’s ruling elite as the leader whose tough policies had saved the nation from the ravages of the pandemic and was now focused on securing China’s rise amid multiplying global threats.
Equally, Xi’s public comments before the talks that “a statesman should think about and know where to lead his country. He should think about and know how to get along with other countries in order to be of service to the world. They could also be read as a kind of lecture that the US once gave to Chinese leaders, in which they told them to throw back at the US.
But his praise was coupled with a somber warning that the nation must stand united behind the party to cope with a world he depicted as increasingly turbulent — and hostile. He didn’t mention the US by name but he still distrusts the world’s other great power.
“Be mindful of dangers in the midst of peace,” Mr. Xi said. “Get the house in good repair before rain comes, and prepare to undergo the major tests of high winds and waves, and even perilous, stormy seas.”
Editor’s Note: A version of this story appeared in CNN’s Meanwhile in China newsletter, a three-times-a-week update exploring what you need to know about the country’s rise and how it impacts the world. Sign up here.
Still, experts say China has made progress in this regard, noting the coordination of its military branches during exercises the PLA held in response to US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August.
With a navy, air force and rocket force that have never before been seen in Asia, China now has the largest navy, air force and rocket force in the world.
Even the largest, most formidable militaries have weakness that can be exploited by smaller, savvier forces.
What should be even more worrying for Xi, as he prepares to secure an expected third term as both party leader and supreme commander of the Chinese military at this week’s 20th Party Congress, is that many analysts see parallels between the problems dogging Moscow in Ukraine and the potential weak spots that remain in the PLA.
China is about to get reunification and the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. Complete reunification of our country must be realized,” Xi told the Congress to thundering applause.
The Communist Party of Taiwan in the Context of a World War II – A Report on the Status of the PLA Navy and the Xi Force
Taiwan lies fewer than 110 miles (177 kilometers) off the coast of China. For more than 70 years the two sides have been governed separately, but that hasn’t stopped China’s ruling Communist Party from claiming the island as its own – despite having never controlled it.
Analysts say that would require hundreds of thousands of soldiers in what would be the largest amphibious operation since the Allies stormed ashore at Normandy in German-occupied France in World War II.
A new aircraft carrier launched this year is one of many ships the Chinese PLA Navy has churned out, however it has cost a lot.
And as Phillips O’Brien, professor of strategic studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, points out, Taiwan has a relatively cheap way of countering them – by investing in the sort of small, land-based anti-ship missiles that Ukraine has been using to great success against Russia.
China also faces a significant challenge in making sure all the different parts of its now formidable fighting forces pull in the same direction – another issue that has dogged Russia in Ukraine.
The creation of unified command structures that allow naval, air, army and rocket units to execute a coordinated battle plan is still in the early stages.
The command system for joint operations needs to be improved and the systems of the PLA need to be strengthened, according to the work report.
The air force and rocket force of the PLA went after Taiwan in the aftermath of the visit, bombarding the Air Defense Identification Zone.
Four of the top six officers of China’s Central Military Commission (CMC) have reached the normal retirement age of 68 and are being replaced as Xi heads into his third term, according to Joel Wuthnow, a senior research fellow at the Center for the Study of Chinese Military Affairs at the US National Defense University.
Four of the departing officers were in charge of the fighting force, while the two remaining ones are from the military’s political ranks, according to a report by Wuthnow last month.
Beijing, China, and the United States tries to reclaim their sovereignty: The Xinjiang missile demonstration on Aug. 4, 2022
Analysts have warned that language could be a smokescreen for something more sinister – likening it to how Russian President Vladimir Putin refers to his invasion of Ukraine as a “special military operation.”
Video screenshot shows a missile launched by the rocket force of the Eastern Theater Command of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army PLA, targeting designated maritime areas to the east of Taiwan on Aug. 4, 2022.
The Chinese state media played down the idea that the order could cover things such as disaster relief or participation in international peacekeeping operations.
“The outlines aim to prevent and neutralize risks and challenges, handle emergencies, protect people and property, and safeguard national sovereignty, security and development interests, and world peace and regional stability,” the Xinhua news service reported.
He wrote in July that the new guidelines on non-war operations would be “a next step in bringing [China’s] military presence out into the world – and likely another step away from the peaceful rise it once promised to the global community.”
Public statements from both sides also appeared to indicate a basic foundation that each recognize the critical nature of their rivalry, and both want to ensure that it doesn’t boil over into a war, at least yet. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is set to visit China next year. In August, Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan and triggered a huge military operation by China, leading to fierce protests and the suspension of exchanges.
The long-term risk is that uncontrolled competition will fuel overextension abroad, where the impulse to counter every potential threat or challenge by the other makes it difficult to focus resources and attention on achieving positive priorities and outcomes. Domestic divisions could be harmed by increased competition in the United States. More than 60 percent of Chinese-born scientists working in the United States, including naturalized citizens and permanent residents, are considering leaving the country as a result of increased anti-Asian violence in America and an effort to protect research security.
There are military operations around Taiwan and the reduction of Chinese maneuvers across themedian line of the Taiwan Strait as a good place to start. Beijing’s actions have undermined the credibility of its assurances that it prefers to resolve differences across the Taiwan Strait peacefully. In his speech on Sunday, Mr.Xi reassured Beijing would continue to try for peaceful reunification and warned against interference by outside forces.
The leader that has not had a third term in office is Mao Zedong. This break from historical norms would represent China moving into a new era, according to Yun Sun, a senior fellow and co-director of the East Asia Program and director of the China Program at the Stimson Center.
“He’s able to focus even more on implementing his foreign strategy and operationalizing his vision of the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” Sun said. “That inevitably will lead to even more, I would say, contest for influence and a contest for leadership, contest for superiority with the United States.”
She believes the political cronies and loyalists of China’s president will be appointed to key positions to help implement his vision.
There are people within the government who do not believe that China’s policies toward the U.S. are the best, Sun said, but she predicts that those voices will be “eliminated from within the bureaucracy,” leaving China without a system of checks and balances.
Self-governing Taiwan has emerged as the sorest subject in an increasingly frosty relationship between Washington and Beijing. It is certain to be one of the more contentious points of discussion between Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping when they meet here Monday for their first face-to-face encounter since Biden took office.
Mao Zedong, the Xi-Bao-Jinping Official, and the US-China Interaction in the Early 2020s
It’s a catch-22 situation, Li said, because the actions from the U.S., like high-level congressional visits from the likes of Pelosi, led to a perception that was not true.
“You get this tit-for-tat retaliation where there’s not a lot of trust … and sort of a back and forth where the U.S. views its actions as responsive to China’s actions, [and] China views its actions as a response to the U.S.’s actions,” Li said.
Meanwhile, the tech industry has become a larger priority for China, especially as the country moves toward the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” by the centennial of the People’s Republic of China in 2049, in which Xi aims to make China a modern socialist country.
As this has become more of a focus, China has worked to bolster its domestic research and innovation capacity, Li said, and that has then caused those in the U.S. to talk about decoupling from China when it comes to the technology and the supply chains that support it.
Li said that the situation is essentially an impasse. That doesn’t mean that progress can’t be achieved, just that it is going to test both countries in the future.
It will be the first in-person visit between Biden and Xi since the US President took office. The Communist Party Congress last month solidified his grasp on power as the strongest Chinese leader since Mao, and he will be expected to do even better at the meeting.
It’s not unusual for Biden to point out the many years the two leaders have known each other. But for all of the times they encountered each other when they were each serving as vice president, his meeting Monday begins at a remarkably low moment in US-China ties.
Today, trust is running low, the rhetoric is increasingly antagonistic and disputes continue to fester in areas including trade, technology, security and ideology.
“There’s not going to be a joint statement of any sort here. The official told reporters this week that the meeting was not being driven by deliverables. The president believes it is critical to build a floor for the relationship and make sure that there are rules for our competitors to follow.
When Joe Biden and Xi Jinping first got to know each other more than 10 years ago, the US and China had been moving closer for three decades despite their differences.
U.S. officials are somewhat optimistic. A senior administration official told reporters before the meeting that the opening of space in the Chinese system was a result of the leaders’ meeting.
As he was in Cambodia talking with Asian leaders, Biden said, “We just need to figure out where the red lines are and what are the most important things to each of us going into the next two years.”
Those who play with fire will die. It is hoped that the U.S. will be clear-eyed about this,” Xi warned Biden over the summer, when the two leaders met virtually.
Pelosi, the United States, and Taiwan: How the US and China respond to Beijing’s failure to follow China’s lead in the war on the East
In October, the party chief said China’s priority would be for peaceful reunification but added that use of force remains an option.
The decline in relations between the US and China was caused by that trip which the Biden administration tried to stop Pelosi from taking. Beijing retaliated by starting military drills and shutting down almost all communication with the US in an effort to avoid conflict.
Such commentary suggests heated behind-closed-doors disagreements on the most volatile areas in the relationship – Taiwan, trade and human rights, for example. Biden said he understood that the US was coming to Taiwan’s defense in the event of a Chinese invasion after adding a measure of strategic confusion with his own recent comments.
According to a professor at the university, the Biden administration will be less flexible in their dealings with China.
If McCarthy is given the majority leader’s job, he would like to visit Taiwan. A Chinese expert on international relations warns of disastrous consequences if the move is made.
The Chinese lost their faces when Pelosi went. A Chinese expert on international affairs who was not authorized to speak to the media said that next time, perhaps they will just take action.
The Problem with China: Restoring Couplings of Communication and Restoring Diplomacy in the Space of Advanced Semiconductor Technology
There were tough export controls imposed on the Soviet Union during the Cold War, says Chris Miller, author of the recently published Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology. “There’s really a lot of similarities, to be honest.”
Dramatic export bans were placed on certain advanced Semiconductor technology last month, because of trade sanctions designed to affect important technology sectors in China.
In China’s case, enforcing the restrictions could be difficult, though. Small chips are easy to smuggle across borders. Also, total enforcement would require other countries that are part of the complex semiconductors supply chain to be on board, and that’s a work in progress.
Beijing dislikes the move and always complains about Washington’s “Cold War zero-sum mentality.” China has yet to take action in response, though. The controls may have been announced at an awkward time for Chinese policy makers even as they were about to make a leadership change.
NUSA DUA, Indonesia — A highly anticipated meeting between China’s leader Xi Jinping and President Biden finished Monday with both leaders expressing an openness to restoring channels of communication and repairing a relationship that has been compared to a second Cold War.
“The problem with China is they don’t like to meet and exchange views – they just repeat talking points. Xi Jinping is not very creative in the way he interacts with his counterparts,” said Jean-Pierre Cabestan, a professor of political science at Hong Kong Baptist University.
There is a window of opportunity “to take a little bit of a gamble,” he believes, now that China’s Party Congress and the U.S. midterm elections are over.
Sud-African Cooperation and the U.S. War: From South Korea to South-East Asia, and a Link to the G-20 Summit in Indonesia
He warns against expecting too much from the summit. He says that a discussion may deepen understanding, but that is all.
The former U.S. official believes that the current moment is just like the 1950s and early 1960s when distrust grew between the U.S. and Soviet Union.
“After the Cuban Missile Crisis, both sides, because of that incredibly searing experience, internalized the belief that strategic restraint, often institutionalized through things like arms control agreements, was in their mutual interests,” he says.
This leg of the trip, a senior administration official told reporters on a call earlier this week, reflects “stepped-up engagement with ASEAN and with Southeast Asia” during the Biden administration.
Biden will meet the leaders of South Korea and Japan as part of the East Asia summit on Sunday before heading to the G-20 summit in Indonesia.
Jake Sullivan said Biden will demonstrate U.S. supremacy against Beijing when he talks about freedom of navigation and fishing in the South China Sea with the leaders of the Association of Southeast Nations.
“There’s a real demand signal for that,” Sullivan told reporters aboard Air Force One on Saturday. Sullivan continued: “I think the PRC might not love that fact, but they certainly acknowledge it and understand it.”
Sullivan said one of the initiatives that Biden will talk about on Saturday is maritime awareness, using radio frequencies from commercial satellites to better track dark shipping.
ASEAN this year is elevating the U.S. to a “comprehensive strategic partnership” status — a largely symbolic enhancement of their relationship but one that puts Washington on the same level as China, which was granted the distinction last year.
Biden met with Hun Sen, Cambodia’s prime minister, who is hosting the regional summit. He participated in the traditional family photo with Southeast Asian leaders, but had to do something strange as Biden was too busy shaking hands with other heads of state; later, he’ll attend a dinner hosted by a parallel summit in Cambodia focused on east Asia.
In February 2021, the military junta replaced the ruling government and arrested the leader of the opposition, but Biden was focused on other topics. As he met with Hun Sen, Biden stressed that the U.S. was committed to the return of democracy in Myanmar, which had steadily headed toward a democratic form of governance before the coup.
The White House says that Biden also pressed Hun Sen to release activists who were convicted of treason for their role in opposing the prime minister’s rule. The Ream Naval Base in Cambodia has been described as a collaboration between it and China by Cambodian officials.
The U.S.-Asiael Summit and the Status of the Korea-South Cooperation Organisation (US-ASEAN) – Cambodia-South Correspondence
There was an empty chair at the U.S.-ASEAN summit, which would have been occupied by a representative fromMyanmar, had the leaders of that country been allowed to attend the official meetings.
Biden flubbed the name of Cambodia in his remarks on Saturday, just like he flubbed the name of South America on Thursday night.
The moments spent together on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit here will amount to only a fraction of the time the two men have been in each other’s company since 2011. Biden has claimed that he traveled 17,000 miles with China’s President Xi throughout his time as vice president and that the relationship is now one of the most important on the planet.
On the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in Indonesia, the two leaders are set to meet up for another honest exchange. The room is probably going to feel different than the surrounding location.
“There wasn’t anybody who wasn’t running on what we did,” Biden told reporters in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, shortly after Democrats clinched another two years of Senate control – and another round of congratulatory calls. “So I feel good, and I’m looking forward to the next couple of years.”
The stakes of their much-anticipated meeting are high. In a world reeling from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Covid-19 pandemic and the devastation of climate change, the two major powers need to work together more than ever to instill stability – instead of driving deeper tensions along geopolitical fault lines.
A senior White House official said Thursday Biden wants to use the talks to “build a floor” for the relationship – in other words, to prevent it from free falling into open conflict. The main objective of the sit-down is not to get any agreements or deliverables, but rather to get a better understanding of the priorities of both leaders, according to a US official.
US national security adviser Jake Sullivan reinforced the message Saturday to reporters aboard Air Force One, noting the meeting is unlikely to result in any major breakthroughs or dramatic shifts in the relationship.
Dialogue between the US and China – a positive outcome in the midst of a heated debate on nuclear, climate, and economic issues
The relationship between the two parties is not good, but each side blames the other for the situation and thinks they are doing better than the other, said Kennedy, who traveled to China recently.
The Americans and the Chinese are willing to pay for this because they think they are winning. Kennedy said that they think the other side will not make any significant changes. “All of those things reduce the likelihood of significant adjustments.”
But experts say the very fact that the two leaders are having a face-to-face conversation is itself a positive development. The risks of misunderstanding and miscalculations can be mitigated by keeping dialogue open.
“I would love to be a fly on the wall to see that conversation because I don’t think that the US or China has been very precise about what its red lines are. And I also don’t think either has been very clear about what positive rewards the other side would reap from staying within those red lines,” said Kennedy, of CSIS.
Now the two leaders are sitting down in the same room – a result of weeks of intensive discussions between the two sides – Taiwan is widely expected to top their agenda. But in a sign of the contentiousness of the issue, barbs have already been traded.
“On the issue of Ukraine, China has already made its position clear many times. It won’t change because of talks with the US President. On North Korea, since March last year, China has already stopped treating the denuclearization of North Korea as a fundamental element of its Korean Peninsular policy,” he said.
He is not rosier about climate cooperation. “China and the US can find many common interests on this, but when it comes to how to deal with climate change specifically, it always leads to antagonism on policies and rivalry over ideology and global influence,” Shi said.
Experts in the US and China say some progress on greater communication and access between the two countries will already be considered a positive outcome – such as restoring suspended climate and military talks.
South Asian Premier Joe Biden, the COP27 climate summit, and his meeting with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi
The election results gave President Joe Biden a boost in his second year in office, but he was still happy to be back in Cambodia.
A day after he arrived in Asia, he got another piece of news from back home that could give him a lift through the rest of his international swing – CNN and other outlets projected his party would retain control of the Senate.
Yet the scale of the challenges abroad, and the effort to translate 21 months of intensive engagement into tangible results for US alliances, will put the value of that political capital on the international stage to the test even as votes are still being counted.
Biden, meanwhile, reported that he stressed to Xi that Beijing also has an obligation to temper North Korea’s destabilizing missile and nuclear activity that has the Pacific region on edge.
But that cooperation is imperative as recent, stepped-up aggression from North Korea will be top of mind for the trio of leaders Sunday. North Korea has conducted missile launches 32 days this year, according to a CNN count of both ballistic and cruise missiles. In both 2020 and 2021, it conducted four and eight tests, respectively.
The ongoing conflict in Myanmar is one of the main topics of discussion this weekend in Cambodia, an official said.
World leaders will discuss ways to promote respect for human rights, rule of law and good governance, as well as address the ongoing crisis inBurma.
On Friday, Biden made a three-hour stop in Sharm El Shiekh, Egypt, where he attended the COP27 climate summit and met with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi.
Biden and Xi Have a Good Meeting: Do We Stand Up or Should We Distinguish? When China Decides to Move on Taiwan
When President Joe Biden first declared that the United States had an obligation to protect Taiwan should China move on it, his words were written off by some as a casual, if unfortunate, mischaracterization of American policy.
Do I think he’s willing to compromise on certain issues? Biden told reporters that he and Xi had a good meeting. “We were very blunt with one another about places where we disagreed.”
“We agree with what we signed on to a long time ago. Taiwan makes their own decisions about their independence, as a side effect of the one China policy. We are not moving – we’re not encouraging their being independent. He said that they were the ones who made the decision.
Biden hopes a face- to-face meeting will yield a more strategically valuable outcome if he enters the talks with little expectation they can produce any concrete results.
I know about him. I’ve spent more time with him than any other world leader,” Biden told reporters a day ahead of his meeting, using another frequently cited – if questionable – statistic. “I know him well. He knows me. We have very little misunderstanding.”
There was almost no expectation among American officials that any of those issues could be resolved simply by getting Biden and Xi in the same room. The release of a joint statement after was not considered to be possible.
Just arranging the meeting itself required US and Chinese officials to establish lines of communication after Beijing furiously cut off most channels following House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan over the summer.
A senior US administration official said that every matter associated with this meeting has been carefully considered and discussed with the other side.
Biden takes meetings like these really seriously and reads extensively prior to them. In meetings with advisers, he runs through various scenarios for how the meeting might go.
First official said that he went through “if this happens then should we handle it this way.” The most important bilateral relationship is what he understands. And it’s his responsibility to manage it well He takes that very, very seriously.
Officials at Monday’s meeting said Biden’s senior-most advisers should travel with him as part of his official delegation. And the said they expected Xi to similarly surround himself with top aides, though the US team entered the meeting expecting to see some new faces on the Chinese side amid an ongoing transition inside Xi’s inner circle.
Biden’s aides have not set a time limit for the meeting, though Jake Sullivan, the US national security adviser, said he expected the talks to run “a couple hours” but could extend longer.
The State of the Art: Dialogue between the U.S. and China after the Interaction with China in a congratulatory message
It has been difficult in recent years to get a sense of Beijing’s intentions abroad due to China’s isolation from the rest of the world but US officials believe it will change soon.
The senior administration believes they can be more assertive on the world stage. It is hard to know what that looks like right now.
Sullivan said this week that substituting the video calls for face to face meetings is a way to give leaders a chance to think about their intentions and priorities in deeper detail.
“He’ll have that opportunity to sit, to be totally straightforward and direct and to hear President Xi be totally straightforward and direct in return,” Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters traveling on Air Force One to Bali.
Sullivan said the White House hopes that the leaders come out of the meeting with a better understanding of the relationship and a way to manage it.
Xi has indicated he is looking to appease an otherwise-fraught relationship with the U.S. “China stands ready to work with the United States to find the right way to get along with each other,” he said in a congratulatory message during a gala dinner at the U.S. nonprofit, the National Committee on United States-China Relations.
China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi presented a list of demands to American diplomats in the Chinese port city of Tianjin. Among them: not to interfere with China’s political system, to not hinder China’s development, and to respect Beijing’s claims over territories like Hong Kong or the democratic island of Taiwan.
“I think it’s more, how can we find ways to communicate about those issues where we have deep fundamental differences of perspective or concerns, but we need to be having continued and ongoing conversation,” said a senior administration official briefing reporters before Biden met with Xi.
An aide gave the phone to the president after wrapping up the dinner with the Asian leaders.
The millionaire wine seller from Maryland on the other end of the line was David Trone who had just been reelected to the House and was thousands of miles away.
The call wasn’t long, a person familiar with it said, but reflected the warmth and enthusiasm Biden had deployed dozens of times in calls to winning candidates over the last week – each one further solidifying a midterm election that dramatically reshaped the prevailing view of his presidency.
As Washington grapples with the domestic repercussions of a voter-induced electoral earthquake that kept the Senate in Democratic hands and has put the inevitability of Republican House control on the shakiest of ground, the most significant near-term effect is palpable here, on Biden’s long-scheduled foreign trip where the first face-to-face meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping is taking place.
US national security adviser Jake Sullivan provided a glimpse into dynamics of the moment, pointing to the fact “that many leaders took note of the results of the midterms, came up to the president to engage him and to say that they were following them closely.”
“I would say one theme that emerged over the course of the two days was the theme about the strength of American democracy and what this election said about American democracy,” Sullivan told reporters aboard Air Force One as Biden traveled from Phnom Penh to Bali, Indonesia, for the Group of 20 Summit.
The birth of a new landscape: The election of Donald J. Biden and the challenges of geopolitical orthodoxy in the United States
White House officials, even those who were bracing for losses in the weeks leading up to election day, have not been afraid to call out pundits or politicians who predicted otherwise.
It was a reflection of the team that feels constantly underestimated and has been searching for success ever since they came to power 21 months ago.
The G-20 was being considered as the likely location for the next meeting between the White House and the Chinese president. There were intensive preparations between the two sides in the lead up to announcing the engagement publicly. It was necessary to sit down regardless of domestic politics because of the uncertain state of the relationship.
The results of the election show that Biden’s theory of the case is true, and that the American political landscape that serves to rattle allies and foes alike is actually working.
There was an awareness of how the US president might deal with his party’s defeat at the same time that the Community Party Congress would happen, according to people familiar with the situation.
One US official said that perversity mattered and so did political standing. Everyone was watching this election and we were well aware that it wasn’t all about the be-all, end-all.
Each of the calls home underscored the fact that the president had entered the meeting with China’s president with a clear agenda and that he knew exactly what he was going to get.
Yet Biden isn’t subtle about his sweeping view of the geopolitical stakes of a moment he’s repeatedly framed as a generational “inflection point,” centered on the battle between democracy and autocracy.
Up until Election Day, allies and foes alike were in large part left to take Biden at his word when he attempted to answer those questions with an emphatic, “Yes.”
Donald Trump, who lied during the election and caused the attack on the US Capitol, remained the most powerful figure in the Republican Party.
Biden had masterfully crafted a sweeping domestic agenda that was done on a bipartisan basis. The high inflation and population exhausted by years of crisis made his approval rating low in the 40s.
It is possible that Biden would face the exact same judgment as his predecessors, even if he was elected a third time. It was going to happen.
Biden had his own political vindication as he moved through bilateral meetings and pull-asides, Gala dinners and summit gatherings to prove that he had a plan on the world stage.
Biden “feels that it does establish a strong position for him on the international stage and we saw that I think play out in living color today,” Sullivan told reporters after Biden departed the ASEAN-US Summit, as the Xi meeting loomed. When we go into the G20 and to his bilateral engagements inBali, I think we will see that.
Dina Titus secured another term in office after she faced a tough reelection battle. Biden needed to pass along his congratulations.
US-China relations during the G20 summit in Indonesia: a key player for the next era of climate change, terrorism and a boost for COP 27
The summit in Indonesia yielded two important outcomes, according to the US: A joint position that Russia must not use a nuclear weapon in Ukraine and an expected resumption of talks on climate between American and Chinese negotiators, a boost for the COP 27 global climate conference in Egypt.
That the world’s two most powerful leaders had not been addressing these issues together in recent months shows how the entire world suffers when Washington and Beijing are as deeply estranged as they’ve been this year.
Leon Panetta – a former White House chief of staff, defense secretary and CIA chief who dealt with US-China relations for decades – expressed cautious optimism after the talks on the sidelines of the G20 summit.
At the summit in Indonesia, it was clear that while both sides want to avoid a clash, their goals are incompatible, as the US wants to be the leading power in the world.
“Neither side should try to remold the other in one’s own image or seek to change or even subvert the other’s system,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry said.
Biden publicly told Xi that the US was ready to reengage in climate talks – at an opportune moment for the Egypt climate summit. The White House said that the leaders of the United States and the United Kingdom had agreed to empower key senior officials to maintain communication, and to deepen their efforts on climate change, debt relief, health security and global food security.
Washington has a foreign policy that is full circle since it was part of the motivation for engaging China during the 1970s Cold War deep freeze, to open strategic gaps between Beijing and Moscow.
Things aren’t so different now, though the dynamic between the Kremlin and Beijing has reversed, with China the global power and Russia the junior partner.
The Secretary of State will travel to China early next year to follow up on the Xi-Biden meeting, according to the State Department.
The world is large enough for the two countries to prosper together, as was mentioned by a foreign ministry spokesman.
What Did China Tell Us When Russia Invaded Ukraine? The Case against the Biden-Chiral-Republican Reionization
Some analysts say China appeared to be blindsided when Russia invaded Ukraine in February. Beijing has repeatedly called for a peaceful end to the war.
And while Biden came in to the G20 with a stronger position due to the narrow Democratic victory in the battle to control the Senate, he is up for reelection in two years himself.