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.
North Korea yesterday made a rare mention of dissenting votes in recent elections, although analysts dismissed it as an attempt to portray an image of a normal society rather than signaling any meaningful increase of rights in the authoritarian state. The reclusive country has one of the most highly controlled societies in the world, with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un accused of using a system of patronage and repression to retain absolute power. Reporting on the results of Sunday’s election for deputies to regional people’s assemblies, the North’s state media said that 0.09 percent and 0.13 percent voted against the selected candidates
‘SYMBOLIC ATTACK’: Ukraine said it downed 74 of the Iranian-made drones, but five people were wounded in Kyiv, as people marked Holodomor Remembrance Day Ukraine on Saturday said it had downed 74 out of 75 drones Russia launched at it overnight, in what it said was the biggest such attack since the start of the invasion in February last year. The Ukrainian army said Russia had launched a “record number” of Iranian-made Shahed drones, the majority of which targeted Kyiv, causing power cuts as temperatures dipped below freezing. The drone attack came as Ukraine marked Holodomor Remembrance Day, commemorating the 1930s starvation of millions in Ukraine under Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. “The enemy launched a record number of attack drones at Ukraine. The main direction
‘SCOURGE’: About 50,000 people demonstrated in Rome after the murder of a 22-year-old university student, while others highlighted the number of femicides in their nations Thousands of people took to the streets across the world on Saturday to condemn violence against women on the international day highlighting the crime. On the UN-designated International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, protesters marched in Europe and the Americas. “The scourge of gender-based violence continues to inflict pain and injustice on too many,” US President Joe Biden said in a statement. “An estimated one in three women globally will experience physical violence, rape, or stalking at some point in their lifetimes. It’s an outrage.” In Guatemala, protesters began commemorations on Friday evening, placing candles to write out 438 —
WEATHER PROBLEM: Seoul said the launch, which comes after the North said its new spy satellite is taking images of US military facilities, was rescheduled for Saturday South Korea has delayed the planned launch of its first military spy satellite set for tomorrow, officials said, days after rival North Korea said it had put its own spy satellite into orbit for the first time. Under a contract with SpaceX, South Korea is to launch five spy satellites by 2025, and its first launch using SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket had been scheduled to take place at California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base in the US. The South Korean Ministry of National Defense yesterday said in a brief statement that the launch was delayed due to weather conditions. Ministry officials said the
RSS