What Did the Biden-Xi Meeting Accomplish?

An unexpected aspect of Joe Biden’s tenure as president of the United States has been the continuation of most of Donald Trump’s policies toward China. Biden’s approach allowed Trump’s tough line on China, such as high tariffs on a wide range of Chinese exports and stiff restrictions on the purchase of semiconductor chips, to continue in force throughout the first two years of Biden’s presidency.

At times, Biden has gone even further. Inadvertently or not, Biden has gone beyond official U.S. policy several times in saying that the United States would commit troops to Taiwan if China were to invade. Of course, no such promise has ever been made, and the Taiwan Relations Act specifically avoids making such a commitment, but Biden on more than one occasion has contradicted that long-held policy. (White House staff generally come in behind to “clean up” such remarks in order to reflect the official policy of the United States.)

So when Biden sat down on the sidelines of the G-20 in November for what turned into a three-and-a-half hour tete-a-tete with Chinese President Xi Jinping, there was no shortage of topics to discuss.

According to Biden, he and Xi “reaffirmed our shared belief in the threat where the use of nuclear weapons is totally unacceptable.” This is no small issue, and a very good one upon which to have agreement. If there were only one box that both could check in agreement among the pantheon of issues defining the U.S. and China relationship, the unacceptability of using nuclear weapons would be the most crucial.  

In a discussion on North Korea, Biden made some rather astonishing remarks. Saying that North Korea “appears poised to conduct a new nuclear test,” Biden then said that “it’s difficult to say that I am certain that – that China can control North Korea, number one.”

Among policymakers, it has been a generally accepted premise of any negotiation with North Korea on its nuclear development weapons program that China is the key to Pyongyang’s final decision-making process and implementation. China is by far North Korea’s largest trading partner, and widely believed to help Pyongyang circumvent tough U.N. sanctions. North Korea withdrew from the Non-Proliferation Treaty in 2002, and Six-Party Talks with China at the table began in 2003. Nearly 20 years later, however, matters stand at a stalemate, except that North Korea appears to be advancing its agenda to engage in long-range nuclear tests.

If it does, Biden said that “we would have to take certain actions that would be more defensive on our behalf, and it would not be directed against… China, but it would be to send a clear message to North Korea.”

Biden made clear that the United States “will do what it needs to defend our capacity to defend ourselves and our allies,” with the implication that could mean moving more U.S. military assets into China’s backyard. “[W]e’d be more up in the face of China. But it wouldn’t be because of China, it’d be because of what was going on in North Korea.” China has in the past vociferously protested new U.S. weaponry on the Korean Peninsula, most notably the THAAD missile defense system.

While having discussions to affirm a shared allegiance to a zero-use policy of nuclear weapons, and providing an early warning that U.S. action to prevent further progress on developing nuclear arms capability in North Korea may come a bit too close for comfort to China, are substantial issues of import internationally, and therefore necessary to discuss, there are dozens of other issues that needed to be covered. Unfortunately, there is even less room for agreement on many of these topics. 

The intractable ones, the issues on which Xi Jinping is likely never going to bend, are those which come within the orbit of China’s sovereign rights. There are a lot of those, of course. Taiwan, Hong Kong, the rights of peoples living within China’s accepted international borders, such as the forcibly-detained Uyghurs, a Muslim minority who live mostly in northwest China’s Xinjiang, and the continuing plight of Tibetans, are all considered taboo and off the official table as far as the Chinese Communist Party is concerned. 

The United States continues to raise these issues nonetheless, as evidenced by the White House readout, but it’s mostly pro forma, with no expectation that the recitation will effect change.

There is one area of contention that doesn’t impact China’s sovereignty at all, and it did not merit a mention in the official readout. The smuggling of fentanyl into the United States by Mexican cartels, who produce it in bulk with Chinese made precursors, and even pre-precursors, is killing up to 65,000 Americans a year, and that number is on the rise.  The targets – and the deaths – are often teenagers. 

It is an issue of grave immediacy, one that in no way threatens encroaching upon China’s thin skin of defensiveness, created by its 19th and 20th century experience of foreign invasion, occupation, and domination. It was something that could be dealt with, and it is an issue close to the grassroots of American domestic life.

Yet China abruptly halted any cooperation with the United States on drug issues after then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August. While Washington pushed hard to restore talks on climate change, resulting in a meeting between the U.S. and China climate envoys shortly after the Biden-Xi summit, there doesn’t appear to have been a similar effort to get Beijing to reengage on fentanyl precursors. 

The Chinese government knows who is manufacturing the precursors of fentanyl and where they are being shipped to. It could act to shut down the operations that ship these fatal ingredients abroad to illicit drug makers and distributors.

If one doubts that the Chinese government has that kind of power and control over individual companies or persons, one only has to look at the COVID-19 lockdown regime of the last three years to understand how deeply capable the Chinese Communist Party is when it comes to tracing, tracking, and physically detaining and deterring anyone, anywhere inside of China. A government that can nail people into their apartments can stop a factory from producing any product it likes. If a government can stop 3 million people in any city in China, or in several at the same time, from going out to buy food, it can seize a ship before it leaves port. 

China’s militarization of the South China Sea, technology and intellectual property theft, Confucius Institutes on college campuses, Belt and Road Initiative exploitative economic projects throughout the developing world… the list goes on of topics which Biden could have raised during his mini-summit with Xi. None of these appeared in the official readout, however.

Takeaways for China and the U.S.

What did Xi Jinping think of the summit? According to the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Xi told Biden, “Currently, the state of China-U.S. relations is not in the fundamental interests of our two countries and peoples. It is not what the international community expects from us either.”

Xi talked about the outcomes of the recent 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, according to China’s readout. He waxed philosophical “that the world is at a major inflection point in history.”

Reportedly, Xi told Biden that “[o]bserving the basic norms of international relations and the three Sino-U.S. joint communiqués is vitally important for the two sides to manage differences and disagreements and prevent confrontation and conflict; indeed, it is the most important guardrail and safety net for China-U.S. relations.” In other words, business as usual, with the terms mostly set by the Chinese side.

Xi expounded upon Chinese-style democracy and Western democracy, the different paths of capitalism and socialism, and the “common pursuit” of humanity for “freedom, democracy, and human rights.” He spoke about the “deeply integrated” status of the two economies of the U.S. and China.  

In his presser with reporters, Biden, upbeat in his tone, said “we had an open and candid conversation about our intentions and our priorities. It was clear...that we’ll defend American interests and values, promote universal human rights, and stand up for the international order, and work in lockstep with our allies and partners.

“We’re going to compete vigorously. But I’m not looking for conflict, I’m looking to manage this competition responsibly,” he said.

“And we’re not going to be able to work everything out. I’m not suggesting… this is kumbaya, you know, everybody is going go away with everything in agreement.”

Biden went out of his way in November 2021 to say that he is not Xi’s “old friend.” The White House has reinforced this point, indeed for largely political purposes – it is not trendy these days in the United States to be seen as a “friend” to any degree of the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party.

But with Biden, it may actually be more than just a political posture that he is trying to cultivate as he maintains distance from Xi. In June 2021 Peter Doocey of Fox News asked Biden if there might come a time when Biden could call Xi, as “old friend to old friend,” and ask him to open up China to the World Health Organization to begin an investigation into the origins of COVID-19. Sounding for all the world like Clint Eastwood in “Dirty Harry,” Biden came out to set the record straight, in four succinct lines that really tell the story of this meeting in Bali between two old dealmakers.

“Let’s get something straight. We know each other well. We’re not old friends. It’s just pure… business.”