2023-11-15 10:55:00
Hong Kong (CNN) — Xi Jinping arrived in San Francisco on Tuesday for a highly anticipated summit with US President Joe Biden, in which the Chinese leader will likely try to shore up his country’s troubled economy and roll back perceived US efforts to suppress it. .
The fact that Xi is on his first trip to the United States in six years — on a four-day visit that includes attending the international Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum — is notable in itself.
The leaders of the world’s two largest economies have not spoken since they last met on the sidelines of another international meeting in Bali, Indonesia, in November 2022.
To organize this meeting, their governments have had to overcome a series of controversial issues: from the handling of a Chinese spy balloon, to Beijing’s persecution of international companies, to restrictions on high technology.
Expectations of breakthroughs at Wednesday’s meeting are low.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping greets upon arrival at San Francisco International Airport on November 14, 2023. (Credit: Brittany Hosea-Small/Archyde.com)
Xi arrives at the summit in the middle of the fight to reactivate a Chinese economy that has not yet fully recovered after the relaxation of its strict controls, with the real estate market in crisis and a record youth unemployment figure.
The economic problems, combined with the inexplicable dismissal of two hand-picked senior officials in his government, have tarnished the image that Xi projected the last time he met with Biden, when he had just consolidated power and begun a third term at the helm. from China that would break the rules.
Biden, for his part, is beset by international challenges, from the war in Ukraine to the latest conflict in Gaza. Another global conflict involving China is the last thing he would like to see, especially as he competes for re-election next year.
“At a time when both are facing domestic and foreign policy challenges, there is less incentive for them to try to go after each other and a little more incentive for them to stabilize their relationship,” said Yun Sun, director of the China Program at the Stimson Center in Washington.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping, left, and US President Joe Biden. (Credit: Getty Images)
Xi’s agenda in the US
Despite the challenges he faces at home, the isolated Chinese leader may see himself in a stronger position than Biden. Beijing considers the US to be mired in deep political polarization and declining globally.
“Xi believes that the US wanted to improve the relationship with China and he responded. They sent those delegations to him… (after he) put pressure on the US government,” said Suisheng Zhao, director of the Center for China-State Cooperation. United States of the University of Denver, referring to visits by American officials to Beijing in recent months.
Beijing believes that it is the United States that “must make a correction” in its attitude towards China. In his eyes, if “they come to us and talk to us, then they should (move) in our direction,” she said.
One of the issues at the top of Xi’s list, analysts say, is U.S. pressure to diversify supply chains and reduce dependence on Chinese manufacturing, an economic driver, and his efforts to restrict China’s access. to the types of advanced American technology vital to the country’s high-tech industries and the modernization of its military.
Beijing views these efforts, which include restrictions on the sale of advanced chips to China and bans on some US technology investments in China, as blatant actions to suppress its rise, and not the limited and targeted national security measures that the Biden administration intends. that are.
Chinese authorities have fought back with their own controls on natural materials used to make technology products.
According to analysts, Xi will ask Biden to clarify and define the scope of the US approach to technology restrictions.
He is also likely to press Biden for assurances about U.S. policy toward Taiwan, the self-governing democracy that China’s ruling Communist Party claims and has promised to unite with.
In recent years, the United States has intensified its support for the island in a context of growing aggression by China. The issue is exacerbated by the imminent presidential elections in January, in which Beijing expects Taiwan’s Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which opposes closer ties with China, to lose power.
“Beijing knows that the election is coming. They are telling the United States in every way possible that this is a red line issue, not to touch it, and that it better control the DPP candidate so that he does not trigger a war that we have to get rid of,” said Sun, of the Stimson Center.
The trip to California will also be a chance for Xi to introduce American businesspeople to the idea that China remains a place of opportunity and is committed to the business-friendly reforms that have fueled its meteoric rise in recent decades.
Xi is expected to underscore this point during a speech to American industry leaders at a dinner this week, although Beijing has not yet confirmed the appearance.
Business confidence in China has suffered in recent years following strict pandemic controls and as Xi intensified state control over the economy and expanded a law against espionage already vague and far-reaching. A series of raids and arrests affecting international companies have raised concerns among Western firms about the risks of doing business there.
Harry Moyer, a 103-year-old veteran of the American Flying Tigers, visits the Kunming Foreign Language School in China’s Yunnan province earlier this month. (Credit: Liu Ranyang/China News Service/VCG/Getty Images)
Positive signs
The build-up to Xi’s visit to the United States has been marked by signs that China hopes to ease tense relations.
In recent weeks, China has welcomed elderly American members of the “Flying Tigers,” a group of fighter pilots and military personnel who helped China fight the Japanese during World War II, to Beijing at a memorial ceremony. State media extensively covered the event and the group’s subsequent tour of China.
The pages of the party’s mouthpiece, the People’s Daily, also included articles calling for improved ties. A editorialwritten under the pseudonym Zhong Sheng, reserved for major foreign policy pronouncements, praised the “enormous potential for cooperation between the two countries.”
The shift from the usual anti-American rhetoric has been so rapid that some Chinese social media users have taken note, prompting jokes on the platforms: “Okay, I’ll stop hating the US for now and wait for further notices.” .
The Chinese population’s sentiment toward the United States also appears to have softened in recent months, according to monthly surveys conducted by the business analysis company Morning Consult. From April to October, the percentage of Chinese adults who consider the United States “enemy or hostile” fell 9 percentage points to 48%, according to the survey.
Meanwhile, the visit of four senior US officials to Beijing over the summer has already led to new talks and reciprocal trips, in an important step forward toward restoring lines of communication cut by Beijing in protest of the visit to Taiwan in 2022 of the then Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi.
Not feasible in practice
But when it comes to whether any of those talks, and the Biden-Xi summit, will result in concessions on the core issues driving tensions between the U.S. and China — such as Taiwan, Beijing’s claims in the disputed Sea of South China or the efforts of both sides in the name of protecting national security—analysts are skeptical.
“Although both China and the United States hope to prevent their competition and confrontation from deteriorating drastically… and both sides attach great importance to avoiding military conflicts with each other, neither side is willing to grant significant and lasting concessions,” Shi said. Yinhong, professor of International Relations at Renmin University of China.
Even on international issues, where both have an interest in ensuring global stability, it is not clear to what extent there can be coordination.
After nearly two years of war in Ukraine, the United States appears to have little hope left that Beijing will pressure its close partner, Russia, to end its invasion.
As for the latest conflict in Gaza, even if Biden asks China to help pressure trading partner Iran not to get involved, coordination could be “practically unfeasible,” according to Shi.
China also remains wary of a sharpening of American rhetoric during the upcoming US elections, in which both Republicans and Democrats may want to appear tough on China to appeal to voters.
All of this means that while China and the United States are likely to resume positive interactions after the meeting, their ties will remain fragile, according to analysts.
Those interactions “will not resolve the fundamental conflict of national interests between the two,” Sun said in Washington. “So the question people will ask is: to what extent is this genuine and sustainable?”
— CNN’s Nectar Gan and Marc Stewart contributed reporting.
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