WASHINGTON — Nearly a decade ago, Joe Biden hosted Xi Jinping for a tour of America that ended in Los Angeles, where they visited a school dedicated to teaching Asian languages. As they mingled casually with students, the two vice presidents couldn’t avoid the geopolitics hanging over what was supposed to be a lighthearted affair.
U.S. relations with China would determine the course of the century, Biden said, calling it “the single most important engagement we have.”
Years later, Biden and Xi are presidents of their respective countries, responsible for navigating a relationship that has slipped from wary optimism into bitter pessimism. There are no more goodwill trips, no more hopeful statements about fostering mutual understanding.
As the two leaders prepare to meet via videoconference on Monday, there is only the cold language of global strategy as the two superpowers become entrenched in opposition that some analysts have described as a second cold war.
It’s a tense dynamic that has generated warnings about the potential for armed conflict, most notably over Taiwan, an island democracy that China considers a breakaway province and has vowed to reclaim. A senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss Biden’s plans, said one goal for the meeting was to create “common-sense guardrails to avoid miscalculation or misunderstanding.”
The official said the meeting could last several hours and will touch on American concerns about China’s economic practices, its regional aggression and its record of human rights abuses.
“The president will be very direct and candid,” the official said, adding that Biden expects Xi to “play by the rules of the road, which is what other responsible nations do.”
Xi has not left China since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, skipping recent summits of world leaders in Italy and Scotland. Although he and Biden have spoken twice on the phone since Biden’s inauguration in January, Monday’s virtual meeting will be their first face-to-face encounter.
There’s no expectation that the session will end with a joint statement or an announcement of new agreements, a reflection of the widening gap between the two countries.
“Both have an incentive to demonstrate resolve, to look strong. But you want to look strong without things getting out of control,” said Ja-Ian Chong, an associate professor of political science at the National University of Singapore. “It’s a matter of how are they going to thread this needle?”
Chong said he believes that the risk of conflict remains low, “but that depends on everybody playing by the script.” However, that can be difficult when there are nervous or excitable service members at the controls of planes and ships that circle each other in the South China Sea, which Washington considers international waters and Beijing claims as part of its territory.
“In some ways, it’s a bit of a game of chicken,” he said.
Dean Cheng, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, said China hasn’t always cooperated with efforts to deescalate tensions in the region, saying “the Chinese don’t pick up the hotlines” that are typically reserved for crisis communications between superpowers.
He was skeptical that the meeting will prove to be productive because China routinely rejects American concerns about oppression of Uyghurs, a Muslim ethnic group in the Xinjiang region, or its tightening grip on Hong Kong, where Beijing has used a new national security law to stomp out dissent.
“Realistically, we’re going to end up in all likelihood talking past each other,” Cheng said.
Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, said last week that there’s no reason to believe Washington and Beijing are fated to conflict.
“China has a different value system. It has different interests. And that’s part of what the ongoing competition will be about,” he told the Lowy Institute, a think tank based in Sydney, Australia. “But there’s no reason that that competition has to turn into conflict or confrontation.”
There was a thaw in the relationship during the recent United Nations summit on climate change in Glasgow, Scotland, where the U.S. and China announced a surprise agreement over the weekend to increase their efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Details were scarce, but it was a sign that some lines of communication remain open and potentially productive.
“There are areas where our interests align and we should be able to work together,” the senior administration official said.
However, the official rejected Beijing’s attempts to tie cooperation on climate change to other issues between the U.S. and China. Addressing global warming is necessary to prevent an existential crisis for the planet, the official said — it’s “not a favor to us.”
Biden and Xi enter Monday’s meeting at a time when they’re trying to strengthen their political standing at home.
Hours before he sits down to speak with Xi, Biden signed legislation with more than $1 trillion of spending on roads, bridges, water pipes, broadband access and other infrastructure, an investment that he has described as a way to keep pace with China’s aggressive program of public works projects.
He’s still pushing for another, $1.85 trillion piece of legislation to create universal access to free preschool, expand public healthcare coverage and boost clean energy to fight climate change.
Meanwhile, Xi is consolidating power in China as he seeks an unprecedented third term as president. The Communist Party’s Central Committee passed a resolution last week declaring Xi’s position “as the core of the entire party” and saying his role reflects “the common wishes of the entire party, military, state and peoples of all ethnicities.”
Only two previous Chinese leaders, Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, had similar statements issued while they were in power.
Xi and Biden have known each other for years, although the intimacy does not seem to have generated harmony.
In addition to the time that Biden hosted Xi in 2012, Biden visited China in 2011 and 2013. Xi had become president by the time of the second trip, and he praised Biden as an “old friend.” Biden responded by saying “the possibilities are limitless” if the two countries form a good relationship.
But Biden has been much harsher recently, describing Xi as a “thug” and saying he doesn’t have a “democratic bone in his body.”
His hardening sentiment reflects a broader shift in the American foreign policy establishment. Despite concerns about President Trump’s chaotic and aggressive approach to China, a bipartisan consensus has emerged that more needs to be done to counter Beijing’s growing influence.
Daniel Russel, a former State Department official who works at the Asia Society Policy Institute, said Biden has always believed “that America, as a free society, had huge advantages over China, ones that China could not overcome.”
“I don’t think his faith in the U.S. is shaken at all,” he said. “But I do believe that he feels we’re faced with a much more formidable competitor than in the past, and we damn well better get our act together.”
