As long as you weren’t expecting anything substantive from the first face(time)-to-face(time) summit between Xi Jinping and Joe Biden, you weren’t disappointed.
The two men smiled and waved at one another, an awkward virtual greeting befitting of the times.
“Good to see you. Next time, I hope we get to do it face to face like we used to when we traveled through China,” Biden said.
“Good to see you,” Xi responded. “Although it’s not as good as a face-to-face meeting, I’m very happy to see my old friend.”
The webcast lasted in excess of three hours.
No one expected anything concrete to come of the spectacle. As Bloomberg put it, “the US made clear ahead of the meeting that there would be no specific outcomes, and that appeared to be the case.”
Xinhua devoted quite a bit of coverage to the summit, including a live play-by-play. “Xi described China-US economic and trade relations as mutually beneficial, and said that economic and trade issues between the two countries should not be politicized,” a summary of Xi’s remarks on bilateral economic relations read. “The two sides need to make the cake bigger for cooperation,” Xi told Biden.
Amusingly, Xi also cautioned that the US “should be mindful of the spillover effects of its domestic macro policies.” That, as his own “common prosperity” push upends markets at regular intervals, both on the mainland, in Hong Kong and abroad. And that’s to say nothing of the potential spillover effects from Evergrande and Beijing’s property curbs. Data out early this week showed China’s economic momentum continued to wane in October, despite some evidence of stabilization.
Xi also said China doesn’t intend to push its development path on other nations, an allusion to accusations the “Belt and Road” initiative is a Trojan Horse. “On the contrary,” Xi said, “China encourages all countries to find development paths tailored to their respective national conditions.”
Biden stuck to the usual talking points. “The United States will continue to stand up for its interests and values and, together with our allies and partners, ensure the rules of the road for the 21st century advance an international system that is free, open and fair,” the White House said, in a press release following the summit.
He brought up China’s human rights record including the Party’s unnerving “reeducation” campaign in Xinjiang. Tibet, Hong Kong and “human rights more broadly” were discussed as well.
The Xinjiang issue is an underappreciated tail risk. Party officials often resort to Whataboutism to deflect US criticism of the Hong Kong crackdown, pointing to fraught race relations in America and last summer’s widespread social unrest across US cities. It’s effective because the US position does indeed smack of hypocrisy. But (and this is the important point) unless the comparison is with pre-Civil War slavery, such efforts are a false equivalence when it comes to the plight of ethnic and religious minorities in Xinjiang under Xi. It’s still unclear what the Western powers’ responsibility would be in the event the situation ever takes an even darker turn. Confronting the PLA in China is a suicide mission. But ostensibly, outright genocide demands military intervention.
The Xinjiang question is so vexing that it’s often brushed aside. It’s a nightmare. No one wants to think about it. And China doesn’t want to talk about it. Western commentators would rather focus on more clear-cut issues like Taiwan which, while extremely contentious and thorny, can at least be discussed in the open without references to… well, let’s just leave that there.
On Taiwan, Biden “underscored that the United States remains committed to the ‘one China’ policy” but said the US “strongly opposes unilateral efforts to change the status quo or undermine peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.”
For his part, Xi essentially told Biden not to overstep, blaming escalations on “repeated attempts by the Taiwan authorities to look for US support for their independence agenda as well as the intention of some Americans to use Taiwan to contain China.” That, Xi said, isn’t a great idea. “Such moves are extremely dangerous, just like playing with fire,” he told Biden. “Whoever plays with fire will get burnt.”
The White House delivered the perfunctory talking point about the difference between competition and conflict, a distinction Donald Trump claimed to recognize, but regularly flouted both in tweet and deed. Biden told Xi the US wants “common-sense guardrails to ensure competition does not veer into conflict and to keep lines of communication open.” Xi likewise emphasized that more communication is necessary and desirable.
There was a semblance of sincerity around joint efforts to tackle climate change. “China means what it says” on environmental goals, Xi insisted, inadvertently suggesting it might not mean what it says on other key issues.
Notably, Xi also suggested he’d rather die than allow anyone (or any nation) to impede “the Chinese people’s aspiration for a better life.” When it comes to the “mission of striving for the happiness of the Chinese people,” quite a bit “has been accomplished,” he told Biden, but emphasized that it’s “far from enough.”
“More needs to be done” to advance the overall happiness of China’s 1.4 billion people, Xi said. “I shall put aside my own well-being and live up to people’s expectations.”
Last week, Xi consolidated power, effectively ensuring he’ll rule China until his death. On Tuesday, shortly after the summit with Biden, Beijing published Xi’s historical resolution, the third in Party history. The full text was 36,000 Chinese characters, 8,000 more than Mao’s.
“I shall put aside my own well-being and live up to people’s expectations.”
Yeah, I bet…
Sounds like something a certain orange mobster used to claim …
No reasons the Chinese shouldn’t learn from the best con artist in the political biz this decade… 🙂
Some strategists are saying US may lift China tariffs to fight inflation. Seems very improbable to expect a President to commit political suicide in return for an uncertain economic effect that won’t be discernible for a year, if ever.
I agree with you- except if Biden can get enough in return to make it worthwhile politically and economically.
“But ostensibly, outright genocide demands military intervention.”
Let Russia do it – they’re closer, lol!
China, like Israel, is being pretty good at this game (or used to be if you look at Tibet). If you spread out your genocide over time and just increase the pressure progressively, you deny the international community a “there, red line” moment and so the international community is happy to sit back, tut-tut, disapprove and be very concerned while doing nothing at all.
Did we learn nothing from Vietnam and Afganistan?
Pyndon Johnson: “We are not about to send American boys 9 or 10 thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.”
Douglas MacArthur (maybe): Did you mean: macarthur never fight land war in Asia
“Never fight a land war in Asia”
‘ “The two sides need to make the cake bigger for cooperation,” Xi told Biden.’
This is the most astute observation I have seen from China. Narrowing our issues with China to one or two, line-in-the-sand, must-haves will never result in concessions by either side. There is just no room for bargaining or compromise because any change in position for either side results in a loss of face with no upside. Making the cake bigger enlarges the number of issues and leaves room for smaller wins tor each side as in … Look what we got.
The one thing we can’t do is make things so hot that we must engage with China militarily. We couldn’t control the Taliban after 20 years and 2 Trillion dollars so we sure as hell can’t even hope to dent the Chinese military machine. Remember we tried that before in Korea and couldn’t get the job done and that was a lifetime ago.
Fighting the Taliban and fighting the PLA would be nothing like.
I don’t pretend to be a military expert but defeating the Talibans was impossible as they are ‘just’ the militia/the armed wing of the Pashtun. It’s like saying you cannot defeat the IRA. Yes, you can. But it would require the ethnic cleansing of the Irish in Northern Ireland. Not something we can actually contemplate or execute.
The PLA on the other hand is a military. It can be confronted and defeated. I don’t know if it’d be easy or could be done without escalating to nuclear but I bet the US military, if it puts efforts into it, would make significantly more than a dent into it…
H-Man, one cake eater has 1.3 billion people and other cake eater has 330 million people, Occam’s razor tells you who gets most of the cake.
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was intended to nullify the US Naval presence in the Pacific and to clear the Pacific for Japan’s expansion and takeover of targets deemed important for Japan’s security and growth for it’s future. It achieved limited success. China is not thinking of repeating a ‘limited success’ if push comes to shove.
People in the US who view Xi’s selfless statements with cynicism do so at their own peril. The embrace of sacrifice and stoicism in defense of the good of the proletariat has been real in Marxist countries. Sure, some eventually went haywire with corruption and failed, but they accomplished massive societal change in their low-corruption early days. China has at least two more generations before corruption truly can make it decay.
I beg to differ with H on comparing the rights abuses in Xinjiang with those committed prior to the US civil war.
Abuses committed during the Jim Crow era against fellow Americans based on their race are still comparable. Recall the images of postcards featuring lynchings as a family activity while reading below.
Here’s an excerpt from HRW’s report on rights abuses at Xinjiang:
“mass arbitrary detention, torture, enforced disappearances, mass surveillance, cultural and religious erasure, separation of families, forced returns to China, forced labor, and sexual violence and violations of reproductive rights.”
Prior to the civil war would be the times when slavery was legal in the South, not the Jim Crow era.