U.S. President Joe Biden meets with Chinese President Xi Jinping at Filoli estate on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, in Woodside, California, U.S., November 15, 2023.
Credit: Reuters Photo
Woodside, California: President Xi Jinping of China told President Joe Biden on Wednesday that it was "unrealistic" for either of the two largest economic and military superpowers to expect to "remodel the other," as both countries tried, in their own way, to halt a downward spiral in their relationship.
Meeting at a century-old estate about a half-hour south of San Francisco, the two men and their top advisers held their first conversation in a year. In somewhat stiff and carefully choreographed statements, they offered the usual assurances that they accomplish much when working together, but alluded to the fears that confrontations over Taiwan, technology, the South China Sea or China's aid to Russia could spill into conflict if left to fester.
"Planet Earth is big enough" for both superpowers, Xi said. He told Biden that their countries were very different but should be "fully capable of rising above differences."
"For two large countries like China and the United States, turning their back on each other is not an option," said Xi, whose own private speeches to his party faithful and his generals have offered a far darker view of two countries that may well be headed to a collision. He added that "conflict and confrontation has unbearable consequences for both sides."
Biden played the gracious host, noting that his relationship with Xi extended back a dozen years, but he resisted the temptation to describe them as old friends. "I value our conversation because I think it's paramount that you and I understand each other clearly," he said, "leader to leader, with no misconceptions or miscommunication."
"We have to ensure that competition does not veer into conflict," he said.
In the days leading up to the meeting, the two sides raced to come up with a list of modest agreements -- not easy for two leaders who have agreed on very little as their nations have spiraled into their worst relationship in four decades.
The leaders met privately after their joint public appearance, and details of their conversation were not known Wednesday afternoon. But there had been hints of how they would try to nudge toward the appearance of agreement. A senior administration official said they were expected to reach the outline of an agreement that would commit Beijing to regulating components of fentanyl, the drug that has driven a devastating opioid epidemic in the United States. But China has made similar commitments before.
They were likely to announce a new forum for a discussion of how to keep artificial intelligence programs away from nuclear command and control -- at the same moment the United States is denying China the advanced chips it needs to develop and train AI programs. And they would probably discuss resuming military-to-military communications, which China cut off after Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan last year, when she was speaker of the House. But there have been periods of military-to-military contact since the George W. Bush administration.
The interactions between the two leaders as they met at the lush Filoli estate, a historic house and garden just northwest of the Stanford campus, had been carefully planned for months. Senior Chinese officials had discussed them in meetings with Biden's most trusted aides, including Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, and Antony Blinken, the secretary of state. Both men were sitting at the boardroom-style table set out in the estate's ballroom, with Biden flanked by Blinken and Janet Yellen, the Treasury secretary.
Sullivan and Kurt Campbell, the lead architects of the approach to China, were also at the table. Campbell has been nominated to become the next deputy secretary of state, and Yellen has become a key player, both in the sanctions imposed on Chinese entities for human rights violations and arms and technology sales, and in the discussions about American investments in China.
Xi arrived at a rare moment of seeming weakness. After decades of rocketing growth, China's economy has slowed. Later Wednesday, he was expected to meet American CEOs and make a case for stepping up investment in China, which has begun to decline. That is partly because of China's dimmer economic prospects, but also because the country has begun to prosecute firms that reveal Chinese economic data or conduct "due diligence" on the performance of Chinese firms before outsiders invest.
Other difficult issues remained to complicate the discussions, including some that Biden's aides had said he intended to raise. They included wars in Ukraine and Gaza and the upcoming election in Taiwan, a self-governing island that China claims as its own.
In briefing after briefing, administration officials have tried to lower expectations about the kind of concrete commitments that used to surround such summits. They said the mere fact that the leaders of the world's top two economies, and most potent militaries, are communicating again is itself a sign of progress.
Graham Allison, a Harvard professor and the author of a book asking whether the two countries are destined for war, wrote in The National Interest that the meeting would encapsulate what he called "two contradictory but nonetheless inescapable facts."
"First, the U.S. and China will be the fiercest rivals history has ever seen," he wrote. "Second, each nation's very survival requires a degree of cooperation from the other."
Biden arrived in San Francisco on Tuesday afternoon with the city locked down for the summit for Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, known as APEC, a group of 21 countries that surround the Pacific Ocean. (He dispatched Yellen to meet Xi when he landed in San Francisco on Tuesday evening.)
Biden's only public event Tuesday was a fundraiser alongside Vice President Kamala Harris, during which he suggested that economic headwinds in China, along with the Biden administration's work to build a network of partners in the Indo-Pacific to counter Chinese ambition, had brought Xi to the negotiating table.
"President Xi is another example of how reestablishing American leadership in the world is taking hold," Biden told the crowd. "They've got real problems, folks."
It was hardly the first time that Biden had referred to China's economic slowdown, and it was only five months ago that he referred to Xi as a "dictator," a comment that his advisers quickly tried to back up.
No joint statement was expected Wednesday to try to smooth over such tough talk. U.S. officials said each government would provide its own account of the discussions.