President Joe Biden speaks during a news conference on the sidelines of the G20 summit meeting, Monday, Nov. 14, 2022, in Bali, Indonesia.
Alex Brandon | AP
WASHINGTON — U.S. President Joe Biden said there “needn’t be a latest Cold War” between the U.S. and China, following a three-hour summit meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Indonesia on Monday.
Biden also said, “I do not think there’s any imminent attempt by China to invade Taiwan,” despite escalating rhetoric and aggressive military moves by the People’s Republic of China within the Taiwan Straits.
Biden and his counterpart held the much-anticipated meeting on the sidelines of the G-20 summit of economically developed nations in Bali.
Biden said he and Xi spoke frankly, they usually agreed to send diplomats and cabinet members from their administrations to fulfill with each other in person to resolve pressing issues.
Although they’ve spoken five times by videoconference, the meeting was the primary one Biden and Xi have held face-to-face for the reason that U.S. president was elected in 2020. The non-public dynamic between the 2 men was friendly, with Biden putting an arm around Xi on the outset and saying, “It’s just great to see you.”
It stays to be seen, nonetheless, whether the summit will produce a real shift in relations between Washington and Beijing, its biggest strategic competitor and long-term military adversary.
Beijing’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the conversation was “in-depth, candid and constructive” in an announcement afterwards.
The 2 leaders reached “vital common understandings,” the ministry said, they usually were prepared now “to take concrete actions to place China-U.S. relations back on the track of regular development.”
A tense rivalry
Tensions between the 2 nations have been slowly escalating for many years, but they skyrocketed after former President Donald Trump launched a protectionist trade war with China.
Since taking office in 2021, Biden has done little to reverse Trump’s trade policies. As a substitute, he has added a latest layer to U.S.-China hostilities by framing American foreign policy as a zero-sum contest between the American commitment to human rights and free markets, and the creeping spread of authoritarianism world wide, embodied by China’s Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
US President Joe Biden (L) and China’s President Xi Jinping (R) meet on the sidelines of the G20 Summit in Nusa Dua on the Indonesian resort island of Bali on November 14, 2022.
Saul Loeb | AFP | Getty Images
During their meeting, Biden also brought up “concerns about PRC practices in Xinjiang, Tibet, and Hong Kong, and human rights more broadly,” in response to an American readout of the summit.
Xi rejected Biden’s complaints, and he told the U.S. president that “freedom, democracy and human rights” were “the unwavering pursuit” of China’s Communist Party, in response to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ statement.
Biden also raised Beijing’s noncompetitive economic practices, which include widespread state intervention in private markets and laws requiring foreign firms to partner with Chinese firms as a way to operate within the country.
The Biden administration has responded to those policies with an increasingly aggressive series of regulations that limit, and in some instances totally bar, the participation of Chinese firms in parts of the U.S. economy, especially which can be critical to national defense.
Each leaders reiterated each country’s so-called “red lines” on the difficulty of Chinese sovereignty over Taiwan, although Biden also sought to calm global fears of an imminent Chinese military incursion onto the island.
Beijing remains to be furious over U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taipei earlier this yr, which China responded to on the time by flying jets over the Taiwan Straits in what it claimed were last-minute military exercises. China also later sanctioned Pelosi personally.
In Bali on Monday, Biden said there had been no change to U.S. policy toward Taiwan. “I made it clear that we would like to see cross-strait issues peacefully resolved, and so it never has to return to that. I’m convinced [Xi] understood all the things I used to be saying.”
Biden said the 2 leaders also discussed Russia’s faltering invasion of Ukraine, a sensitive subject on condition that China has turn out to be Russia’s economic lifeline within the wake of sanctions that cut off Moscow’s trade relations with a lot of the world’s major democracies, including america and EU member states.
“We reaffirmed our shared belief that the threat or the usage of nuclear weapons is completely unacceptable,” Biden said at a transient press conference after the meeting.
Putin has repeatedly suggested that Russia’s use of a nuclear weapon in Ukraine could be inside its rights, the primary time in 70 years that a nuclear power has seriously threatened deploying an atomic weapon to enhance conventional warfare.
North Korea’s nuclear weapons program and its recent flurry of ballistic missile tests also got here up in the course of the talks.
China continues to exert more influence over the rogue state than another nation, but Biden said it wasn’t clear how far that influence extends into North Korea’s military testing regimen.
“It’s difficult to say that I’m certain that China can control North Korea,” Biden said. “I’ve made it clear to President Xi Jinping that I believed [China] had an obligation to try to make it clear to North Korea that they shouldn’t engage in tests.”
Notably, Biden also said that if China fails to influence North Korea to halt the barrage of tests, then america can have no alternative but to “take certain actions that may be more defensive” as a way to safeguard allies South Korea and Japan.
Biden told the reporters in Bali that he sought to reassure Xi that these actions “wouldn’t be directed against China, however it could be to send a transparent message to North Korea.”
Still, the subtext was clear: If China cannot rein in North Korea’s aggression, Beijing can expect to see america shift more military assets to the Western Pacific and maintain a fair greater presence in China’s maritime backyard.
US President Joe Biden (R) and China’s President Xi Jinping (L) shake hands as they meet on the sidelines of the G20 Summit in Nusa Dua on the Indonesian resort island of Bali on November 14, 2022.
Saul Loeb | Afp | Getty Images
The unexpectedly strong performance of Biden’s fellow Democrats in last week’s U.S. midterm elections had strengthened his hand going into the summit, Biden said.
“I feel the election held in america … has sent a really strong message world wide that america is able to play,” said Biden. “The USA is — the Republicans who survived together with the Democrats are — of the view that we’ll stay fully engaged on the planet and that we, the truth is, know what we’re about.”
Following Monday’s summit, Biden will spend the subsequent two days in Bali meeting with G-20 world leaders, where Russia’s war on Ukraine is anticipated to dominate the conversation.
