Opinion | Don’t be surprised if Xi Jinping is a no-show at US Apec summit

In light of the Russia-North Korea summit and China’s chip breakthrough, it’s unlikely that Beijing can be easily talked into another Biden-Xi meeting

Moreover, given the dictates of the White House’s current foreign policy, what genuine concessions could Biden make to Xi?

Reading Time:4 minutes

Published: 8:30pm, 21 Sep 2023

Last week seemed an eventful one in diplomacy: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken held forth on American foreign policy in Washington on Wednesday, before US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and China’s top diplomat Wang Yi held multiple rounds of meetings in Malta over the weekend.

Blinken’s address, titled “The Power and Purpose of American Diplomacy in a New Era”, struck me as idealistic dictates by an ideological prophet, rather than an exposition of American foreign policy by the Biden administration’s chief diplomat.

The Sullivan-Wang meetings, meanwhile, were described by both sides as “candid, substantive and constructive”, just as their earlier discussions in Vienna in May and Sullivan’s meeting with Yang Jiechi, Wang’s predecessor, in Luxembourg in June last year, had been characterised.

Blinken, in his speech, declared the end of the post-Cold-War period, which he said was being succeeded by “an intensifying competition with authoritarian powers, revisionist powers”.

He then reiterated that Russia and China were respectively “the most immediate, the most acute threat to the international order” and “the most significant long-term challenge”.

What raised eyebrows is that his speech was not only rich in self-righteous rhetoric on international affairs, but also extended his Manichaean dualistic view to a domestic context when he called for vigilance against the dangers posed “from the inside by elected leaders who exploit resentments and stoke fears; erode independent judiciaries and the media; enrich cronies; crack down on civil society and political opposition”. As I read this, former US president Donald Trump and his followers popped into my head.

Opinion | Don’t be surprised if Xi Jinping is a no-show at US Apec summit

In light of the Russia-North Korea summit and China’s chip breakthrough, it’s unlikely that Beijing can be easily talked into another Biden-Xi meeting Moreover, given the dictates of the White House’s current foreign policy, what genuine concessions could Biden make to Xi?

In light of the Russia-North Korea summit and China’s chip breakthrough, it’s unlikely that Beijing can be easily talked into another Biden-Xi meeting

Moreover, given the dictates of the White House’s current foreign policy, what genuine concessions could Biden make to Xi?