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Opinion | US-China relations: Joe Biden, Xi Jinping meeting still worthwhile despite rising tensions
- Competition is neither new nor exclusionary to engagement, as the Biden-Putin meeting and other US foreign policy approaches have made clear
- At most, a Biden-Xi meeting can set the lower limit for disagreements rather than aiming for the heights greater engagement brings, but that might be enough
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Last week in Geneva, US President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin held their first face-to-face meeting. By many accounts, the gathering lived up to its anticipated low expectations. After all, there is so little to build on.
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The relationship is marked by world views and geostrategic rivalry that separates Moscow and Washington on everything from the Middle East to human rights to acts of cyber sabotage and election meddling.
Still, the meeting sent a signal that both sides, at least for now, are working to avoid further deterioration even when their interests sharply diverge. This holds true for US-China relations where Biden and President Xi Jinping can show that both nations will avoid direct conflict despite the heat of current tensions.
A heads-of-state meeting sometime in the first year of the Biden presidency should happen despite the potential for disagreements.
Even though Xi’s recent call for a softer public diplomacy was widely seen as a change in tone but not substance to many US observers, there is still an opportunity for constructive dialogue as long as the talks do not devolve into vitriol like during the US-China meeting in Alaska.
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A lack of “deliverables” – diplomatic parlance for concrete actions – should not be an impediment. After several hours of private conversations, Biden and Putin went on to hold individual news conferences and described the talks as “positive” and “constructive”.
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