Xi Jinping and Joe Biden
By Manish Anand
New Delhi, November 13: The US and China have worked closely to make Joe Biden and Xi Jinping Summit on Wednesday in San Francisco possible after events in the aftermath of the visit of Nancy Pelosi, former US Congress Speaker, sent the bilateral relations to the abyss. The hard work on both sides for the summit limits the scope for fireworks while experts argue that the meeting of the leaders of the two largest economies in the world present an opportunity to mitigate downward risks in relations.
Even after printing excess cash after the pandemic the US economy has come out resilient, growing in excess of two per cent. In contrast, the Chinese economy is hurtling down, with the western economists even doubting Beijing’s claims of growing above three per cent in last fiscal. Chinese President Xi Jinping will be meeting several US business leaders after the summit with Biden as spotlight turns on negative foreign direct investment flow in the third quarter of the current fiscal.
The foreign affairs observers are largely leaning to the argument that the US now has a heft to make China fall in line and play the global economy as per the terms nudged by Washington. The Financial Times in a curtain raiser quoted Bonnie Glaser, a China expert at the German Marshall Fund, saying: “China’s economic situation raised incentives to work with the US to ease tensions. Beijing wants to buy time to cope with China’s economic problems and boost innovation in technologies hampered by American restrictions. The US wants to demonstrate the efficacy of its proposed model for managed competition with China, which the administration hopes will last at least through the 2024 US presidential election.”
Xi and Biden had last met on the sidelines of the G20 Leaders’ Summit in Bali, Indonesia last year. The two leaders had traded biting words with each other. Afterwards, the bilateral relations went crashing to the abyss to bring in an urgency to for repair work.
Foreign Affairs in a perceptive commentary quoted Evan Medeiros, a former top White House Asia official, who is now at Georgetown University, saying that the “summit marked the acceptance by both sides that they were in the opening phase of long-term geopolitical competition”. “They are now beginning the complex process of negotiating the terms of this competition — where and how to compete, what risks to run and what costs to pay. This summit is central to this negotiation,” Medeiros was quoted.
While China is certainly battling an economic downturn on the back of bubble burst in the property market, the US also has a challenge on its hand as Beijing is dumping the American bonds and buying gold while collaborating with others for dedollarisation.
Thomas J. Duesterberg, while writing in the Wall Street Journal, stated that “from supporting other authoritarians’ military efforts to trying to displace the U.S.-led global financial system, Mr. Xi is undermining the security of America and its allies. But China’s weakening economy offers an opportunity to win meaningful changes in Beijing’s policies. It will take a hard-line approach to get China’s attention”.
Foreign affairs commentators have been underlining that China has almost a sense of paranoia that the US-led West would conspire to derail the Chinese ‘Rejuvenation’, which has been noted for Xi’s ambitions to play a major role for his country in the international affairs. While Xi is indeed under pressure to assert economic resilience of China, Biden too is noted by experts to be under stress with two-front wars – in Ukraine and the Middle East.
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