Biden meets China in a summit to discuss the relationship between the Ukranian and the Korean Peninsula – and what the US wants from the sit-down

During Biden’s getting-to-know-you trip to China in 2011, the two leaders shared a marathon of meetings and meals in Beijing and the southwestern city of Chengdu. They traveled to the green mountains of Sichuan province to visit a high school rebuilt after it was hit by an earthquake.

The heads of the two world power met face-to-face at the sidelines of a global summit in Indonesia on Monday. In a substantial meeting, they touched on the war in Ukraine, military tension in the Taiwan Strait and North Korean missile tests.

The Democrats were projected to keep the Senate in a major victory, following a better-than- expected performance by their party in the US mid-term elections. Asked Sunday whether the results allowed him to go into Monday’s face-to-face with a stronger hand, Biden voiced confidence. He said he was coming in stronger.

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.

Kim said the meeting could be used for much more than just airing grievances. A joint declaration by Biden and the Chinese leader that they oppose the threat of nuclear weapons in Ukranian and the Korean Peninsula, as well as restarting working level exchanges about areas of common interest such as Climate Change and counter-narcotics would be promising.

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 about reaching agreements or deliverables – the two leaders will not release any joint statement afterward – but about gaining a better understanding of each other’s priorities and reducing misconceptions, according to the US official.

The US national security adviser Jake Sullivan reinforced the message that the meeting is unlikely to result in any huge changes in the relationship when he spoke to reporters on Air Force One.

The hopes of a reset with Washington in Beijing are not very high. Shi Yinhong, an international relations professor at Renmin University, said it would be an “enormous over-expectation” to believe the meeting can lead to any lasting and significant improvement in bilateral ties.

“The Chinese believe the US goal is to keep China down so we can contain it. According to Scott Kennedy, senior adviser in Chinese business and economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, the US believes that China wants to push the US out of Asia and weaken the alliance system.

Kennedy recently returned from a weeks-long visit to China where he said both sides blame the other for the state of their relationship and think they are better than the other.

“The Chinese think they’re winning, the Americans think they’re winning, and so they’re willing to bear these costs. The other side is unlikely to make any significant changes, Kennedy said. “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. Keeping dialogue open is crucial for reducing risks of misunderstanding and miscalculations, especially when suspicions run deep and tensions run high.

In public, Xi said that a leader should think about and know where to lead his country. He must think about and know how to get along with other countries and the wider world now that China is a major power. But they could also be read as the kind of lecture that Washington once delivered to Chinese leaders that Xi is now taking the opportunity to throw back at the US.

Biden said after the meeting that he didn’t see more conciliatory or confrontational from Xi. I found him the way he’s always been: Direct and straightforward. … We were very blunt with one another about places where we disagreed or where we were uncertain of each other’s position.”

“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.

The “Taiwan question” is within the confines of China. It is “at the very core of China’s core interests, the bedrock of the political foundation of China-U.S. relations, and the first red line that must not be crossed in China-U.S. relations,” wrote Hua, the spokesperson, on Twitter after the meeting ended.

The Climate talks that were frozen after Nancy Pelosi’s controversial visit to Taiwan will be resumed by Beijing and Washington, analysts said. The White House said that the leaders agreed to strengthen their communication and deepen their efforts.

The Chinese government retaliated by launching large scale military exercises around Taiwan that led to an effective blockade and stopped dialogue with the US in a number of areas.

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. barbs have already been traded in a sign that the issue is contentious.

He said that he expected to speak with President Xi, but he did not say when. Mr. Biden called Peter Alexander of NBC News and told him that he didn’t think China wants to damage ties over the incident. “I think the last thing that Xi wants is to fundamentally rip the relationship with the United States and with me,” the president said.

That plan drew immediate condemnation from Beijing. “It is egregious in nature. The Chinese foreign ministry said on Friday that it was opposed to the meeting between Biden and Xi.

The experts said that if there is progress on greater communication and access between the two countries then there will be a positive outcome.

According to the US, the summit in Indonesia yielded two important outcomes; a joint position by Russia and the US not to use a nuclear weapon in Egypt and a boost for the global climate conference in Egypt.

“We’re also continuing to engage with China as we have throughout the past two weeks,” Mr. Biden said. I have said since the start of my administration that we want competition, not conflict, with China. We will compete, but we are not looking for a new Cold War. We will be good stewards of that competition.

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.

Panetta thinks that the meeting will put the relationship back on a diplomatic plane and allow them to have a conversation about the kind of issues that need to be solved.

First Face-to-Face Exchange between the U.S. and China: Nixon’s visit to China and his commitments to improve relations with China

“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.

Nixon intended to open strategic gaps between Beijing and Moscow in order to engage China during the 1970s Cold War deep freeze, so the foreign policy of the United States has come full circle.

The dynamics between Russia and Beijing have changed since the beginning, with China the world power and Russia the junior partner.

Since Biden became president, today’s meeting was the first face-to-face exchange between them. Analysts say that it happened after the leaders improved their political positions at home.

Speaking after the three-hour meeting, Biden described it as an “open and candid” discussion, saying he planned to manage the China relationship “responsibly.”

Yu says Monday’s meeting is just a baby step towards improving relations and won’t resolve any of the grievances both sides have had against each other.

He would be the biggest priority to improve relations with the U.S. given domestic sentiment that is anti- U.S. [Secretary of State Antony] Blinken will be visiting China in two weeks. He needs to improve relations with other countries in order to help China’s economic recovery. Then he also needs to deal with Russia and North Korea,” she says.

From Beijing’s perspective, the U.S. has since done the opposite on all counts. It has imposed the semiconductor export bans and sanctioned some of China’s leading technology firms — moves Beijing decried.

Beijing’s response to the U.S. president’s visit to Taiwan and its criticism of Russia’s nuclear-nucleus war in Ukraine

“The world is big enough for the two countries to develop themselves and prosper together,” tweeted Hua Chunying, a foreign ministry spokesperson who accompanied Xi in his meeting with Biden.

On Taiwan, despite intense media speculation over Beijing’s intention, Biden said he did “not think there’s any imminent attempt on the part of China to invade Taiwan.”

The president objected to Beijing’s actions in the waters around Taiwan, as well as the other countries in the region, because they undermined peace and stability and jeopardized global prosperity.

China is also watching closely. The new military leaders from China’s Eastern Theater Command have stated that Taiwan is a priority for the Chinese fighting forces going forward. He urged his military to focus on fighting.

The U.S. has pushed China to take a clearer stand against Russia’s war in Ukraine, which China has tried to remain neutral on despite signing a partnership with Moscow in February.

During their meeting, the two leaders agreed “that a nuclear war can never be won and that they oppose use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine,” according to the White House statement. The Chinese statement did not include a reference to nuclear weapons.

Wang Yi, the foreign minister of China, made three demands in order for the U.S. to agree to improve relations with China.

Building a Floor: China and Hong Kong Stock Markets buoyed by the G20 Meeting of the World’s Top Economic Powerhouses

The Senate win for the Democrats gave Biden a stronger position at the G20, but he is also up for reelection in two years.

The meeting could lay the groundwork for stronger ties between the world’s top economic powerhouses. Stock markets in mainland China and Hong Kong were buoyed as a result, with technology giants such as Alibaba

            (BABA) and Tencent

            (TCEHY) soaring on Tuesday.

Neil Thomas, senior analyst for China and Northeast Asia at Eurasia Group, said the goal of the meeting was to “build a floor” under declining relations between Beijing and Washington.

Ken Cheung, chief Asian foreign exchange strategist at Mizuho Bank, said the meeting was a positive sign that the two sides were keen to find common ground.

The Hang Seng index gained 4% on Tuesday and is on track for a third straight day of gains. Since last week, the index has gained ground thanks to the latest policy shift towards a gradual reopening of borders, and a rescue package for the property sector.

Chinese technology shares were hammered by a regulatory squeeze at home, which led markets higher on Tuesday. Alibaba shares shot up by 11% in Hong Kong, followed by Tencent, which was up 10%.

They said the reiteration of the US position on Taiwan and the One China policy by Biden was helpful.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/15/business/us-china-g20-meeting-stronger-ties-intl-hnk/index.html

Qin, 56, is a Diplomate for the People’s Republic of China, and he’s Dominated by “Guns N’ Roses”

“This was far more progress than we, or indeed most commentators had expected, and dominates what may otherwise turn out to have been a fairly irrelevant G20 summit,” the ING analysts said.

Beijing’s relations with the US continue to be strained and the appointment that was announced Friday comes as a result. He replaced Wang Yi, 69, who was promoted to the politburo of the ruling Communist Party in October, and is expected to continue to work in foreign policy.

An active Twitter user with more than a quarter-million followers, Qin is a trusted aide to China’s top leader, Xi Jinping. The 56-year-old will now become one of the youngest foreign ministers in the history of the People’s Republic of China.

In an interview in the year-2013, he talked about his thinking on diplomacy. Diplomacy is a complex and systematic work. He said it can be hard with either soft or hard material. “It can also be both hard and soft. As time and situation change, the two may transform into each other.”

But the new face of China’s diplomacy has a long to-do list, ranging from U.S.-China relations to Beijing’s partnership with Moscow, says Sun Yun, director of the China Program at the Stimson Center in Washington, D.C.

Asked by a foreign reporter in 2008 about Guns N’ Roses’ album “Chinese Democracy,” which Chinese state media called a “venomous attack” on the nation, Qin chided the journalist: “Many people don’t like this kind of music because it’s too raucous and noisy.” “I think that you are a mature adult, aren’t you?” he asked.

At home, Qin’s handling of tough questions has won him applause – from Chinese media to his alma mater, the University of International Relations in Beijing, which praised him for “never beating around the bush.”

In 1988 he was assigned to work for the Beijing bureau of the United Press International, which was a US news agency. The Chinese nationals were not allowed to be directly employed by non- Chinese news outlets.

Later, as a diplomat, he cultivated a specialization in Western European affairs, serving twice in the Chinese embassy in London in the 2000s – first, as a third and second secretary, and later as a minister.

He spent his short stint in the U.S. visiting farmers, and chatting with Musk, as Beijing’s top diplomat. The door of Chinese-U.S. relations is already open and cannot be closed, Qin told reporters when he arrived in Washington.

Mr. Biden has been whipsawed by criticism from both directions, accused of being too slow to respond to the Chinese spy balloon as it meandered across the United States even as he was chided for overreacting to the subsequent objects that now appear to be relatively harmless, except perhaps to civilian air traffic.

The president defended his actions, saying he waited to shoot down the spy balloon until it was safely over water while later taking down the others without knowing what they were “out of an abundance of caution.” He said he has ordered his administration to develop “sharper rules” to respond to future intrusions in American airspace.

But even amid the crossfire in Washington, Mr. Biden appeared determined not to further escalate tensions with China, hoping to resume a dialogue that was upended when the spy balloon was spotted over the continental United States. China’s defense chief refused to speak to Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III about the balloon once it became public, and the Secretary of State called off a trip to Beijing.

Beijing’s response to the Blinken-Wang balloon incident is unlikely to deepen the U.S.-China diplomatic crisis

The meeting will take place in Munich, Germany, where both are attending a global security conference, said the source, who declined to be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

Beijing insists the balloon was a civilian craft for scientific research, and that shooting it down was an overreaction and a violation of international practice.

It’s unclear how helpful a meeting between Blinken and Wang will be in stabilizing bilateral relations, given that both sides have dug in their heels on the balloon.

On Friday, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said the U.S. could not seek dialogue while at the same time taking steps to deepen the crisis, a possible reference to sanctions the U.S. imposed on six Chinese companies in response to the balloon incident.