After Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) spoke for more than three hours on Monday with US President Joe Biden on the sidelines of the G20 summit, China’s readout of the meeting indicates the country’s approach to US ties is shifting.
The leaders set a more positive tone for relations, which reached a low point after US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in August. Xi and Biden greeted each other with a handshake and agreed to resume bilateral talks on climate change, economic stability, and health and food security.
The White House said in a statement afterward that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken would travel to China to follow up.
Photo: AFP
Plenty of disagreements remain, over topics including Taiwan, technology and human rights.
However, tensions have eased, with China’s statement offering the US more incentives to work together and issuing fewer warnings than other recent communications. Here are five key shifts in China’s language:
WARMER TONE
Beijing described the in-person meeting as “candid, in-depth and constructive” — with the last term usually used by China to suggest a positive development. When Xi and Biden spoke by telephone in July, just days before Pelosi’s Taiwan trip, that description was missing from the statement Beijing issued afterward.
The July statement was also just 911 characters long, while the more than 2,800-character readout following Monday’s meeting was more explanatory.
TAIWAN
In another sign that tensions have been dialed back, Xi told Biden that the US must abide by the “one China policy” rather than Beijing’s “one China principle,” as he did in July. That small tweak in language is an important recognition that the two sides interpret Taiwan’s status differently.
In July, Xi’s language about Taiwan was aggressive. The Chinese leader warned Biden that “whoever plays with fire will perish by it” and spoke of the “firm will” of China’s 1.4 billion people to defend the country’s territorial integrity.
That heated language was notably absent from Monday’s statement, although it is clear that the two nations’ differences over Taiwan are far from resolved: The statement described the nation’s fate as “the first red line that must not be crossed in China-US relations.”
SUCCEEDING IN PARALLEL
The statement used conciliatory language to state that US-China relations need not be a “strategic competition.”
In July, Xi bluntly accused the US of “misperceiving” China as a primary rival that posed a long-term challenge. On Monday, the emphasis fell on the benefits a rising China could bring to the US.
“The world is big enough for the two countries to develop themselves and prosper together,” Xi said, adding that “under the current circumstances, China and the United States share more, not less, common interests.”
ECONOMIC COOPERATION
In a similar vein, Xi in July warned the US against cutting China out of supply chains.
“Attempts at decoupling or severing supply chains in defiance of underlying laws would not help boost the US economy,” he said.
However, on Monday, Xi focused on mutual benefits, saying: “The two economies are deeply integrated, and both face new tasks in development. It is in our mutual interest to benefit from each other’s development.”
That said, he also told Biden that “suppression and containment will only strengthen the will and boost the morale of the Chinese people.”
Xi added that tackling climate change and other regional and global issues are both sides’ interest.
WHAT WAS NOT SAID
While the Chinese readout mentioned Russia’s war in Ukraine, it did not refer to the two leaders’ agreement that “a nuclear war should never be fought and can never be won,” or their opposition to the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons there.
Instead, it repeated Xi’s usual comments that China always stands on the side of peace and is willing to facilitate dialogues.
There was no mention of North Korea.
Xinjiang or Hong Kong were also absent from the statement, although the White House noted Biden had raised concerns about human rights in both locations.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS