Presidents Xi and Biden Seek to Turn Back the Clock in San Francisco

It was 1985 and a fresh-faced Xi Jinping’s first journey to the U.S. (or anyplace outdoors of China, so it’s believed.) Sporting a brown jacket over grey pullover, necktie tidily knotted, the then 31-year-old princeling flashes a carefree grin for the digital camera in entrance of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, a pose replicated by numerous beguiled vacationers each earlier than and since.

Again then, Xi was a junior Chinese language official main a delegation to the U.S. to review trendy agriculture methods. Xi visited the U.S. 4 extra occasions earlier than he assumed China’s management in late 2012, and has returned 4 occasions since, most not too long ago sharing chocolate cake with former President Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago in 2017. At that assembly, Trump hailed the “nice chemistry” between the leaders and foresaw “a number of very doubtlessly unhealthy issues can be going away.”

As predictions go, it wasn’t one in every of Trump’s greatest, and relations between the world’s high two economies have spiraled within the six years since. Altering that trajectory can be high of the agenda when Xi returns to San Francisco on Tuesday for an Asia-Pacific Financial Cooperation (APEC) summit, with a bilateral assembly with President Joe Biden set for Wednesday.

“The 2 heads-of-state can have in-depth communication on strategic, normal and directional points regarding China-U.S. relations, in addition to main points regarding international peace and growth,” Chinese language overseas ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning informed an everyday briefing on Monday.

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The stakes are excessive for each side. The average thaw achieved following a summit between Xi and Biden in Bali final November returned to deep freeze by February when the U.S. shot down an alleged Chinese language spy balloon. At the moment, Washington has blocked the sale of high-tech parts to China, ramped up arms gross sales to Taiwan, and has backed the Philippines over recent skirmishes with the Folks Liberation Military (PLA) within the South China Sea.

In the meantime, China’s economic system is mired in a extreme downturn, with youth unemployment at 46.5%, by some estimates, whereas the world’s high buying and selling nation once more veered into deflation in October. One measure of overseas direct funding into China fell negative within the third quarter of 2023 for the primary time on document.

In opposition to this backdrop, one can forgive Xi if he struggles to summon the identical blithe cheer seen in that just about four-decade-old picture. He desperately wants to scale back strain on China’s ailing economic system and can search assurances over the status of Taiwan, the self-governing island of 23 million that Beijing claims as its personal. Biden, in flip, may do with an enormous overseas coverage win with the U.S. presidential election lower than a 12 months away. He can be eager for Chinese language assist to resolve the conflicts in Ukraine and Israel in addition to reestablishing de-escalation mechanisms between each side’ armed forces.

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Following the visit of then-Home Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan in August 2022, military-to-military communications between the superpowers have largely ceased, with a sequence of current near-misses between the nations’ vessels and plane. Biden “is decided to see the reestablishment of military-to-military ties,” his nationwide safety adviser, Jake Sullivan, informed CBS on Sunday, saying it was “within the U.S. nationwide safety curiosity.”

Nevertheless, Chinese language analysts say that Washington will not be strolling the speak. Zhou Bo, a retired PLA senior colonel and senior fellow on the Middle for Worldwide Safety and Technique at Tsinghua College, factors out that no senior U.S. navy official attended final month’s Xiangshan Forum on regional safety in Beijing. “I consider the U.S. missed an excellent alternative as a result of the Chinese language facet prolonged invites,” he tells TIME.

And whereas the U.S. will reemphasize it seeks no change to the established order in Taiwan, August’s announcement of $500 million of new weapons sales, following Congress’s passing in Could of a historic trade deal with Taiwan, makes this a troublesome promote in Beijing. Concern about Taiwan is heightened because the island prepares to carry presidential elections in January, with polls indicating the Beijing-skeptic Democratic Progressive Social gathering is on target for an unprecedented third straight time period.

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The query is what each side are prepared to placed on the negotiating desk. Early stories are {that a} deal to curb the move of lethal fentanyl from China to the U.S. is near being agreed. Beijing has additionally demanded rollbacks in tariffs and sanctions however may need to accept assurances the U.S. is not going to inflict new ones as a substitute. 

Most pressingly, Biden will need Xi to leverage his influence in Tehran—China is the highest purchaser of Iranian oil—to make sure its proxies don’t increase the Israel-Hamas warfare. Xi has already telegraphed his peace-building ambitions by negotiating a truce between Iran and Saudi Arabia, and any progress on peace in Ukraine and Israel—whereas admittedly a quixotic proposition—could be an enormous win for each side. What concessions Washington is prepared to pony up is the massive query.

“Beijing is making an attempt to place itself as a safety participant globally,” says Oriana Skylar Mastro, a fellow on the Freeman Spogli Institute for Worldwide Research at Stanford College and writer of Upstart: How China Turned a Nice Energy. “Xi Jinping will need to transfer past simply discussing regional points to make some stronger statements about international points as properly.”