The phone call between US President Joe Biden and Chinese strongman Xi Jinping last week may be construed as a follow-up to the in-person meeting they had in November in San Francisco. To recapitulate, the main objective of the San Francisco meeting was to try and establish common sense guardrails so that “competition does not veer into conflict”. The first requirement for this is constant communication between the two sides at all levels and that seems to have been achieved. Indeed, after the telephone call, both sides agreed that the conversation was candid and constructive.
Indications are that Biden initiated this telephone call. This need not be overinterpreted to mean that the US needs stability in bilateral ties more than China does. Perhaps, both sides need it for different reasons. Biden would not want yet another theatre of conflict in Taiwan, in addition to the ones in Ukraine and Gaza, given the impending American elections. Xi Jinping faces way too many headwinds, all of which have been well documented. He needs a breather too, to set his house in order. So it suits them both to act all statesmanlike and signal a temporary truce, if nothing else.
Indeed, Xi Jinping after the conversation said ” Sino-US ties are stabilizing”. This is a far cry from two years ago when both sides were emitting hot air over a balloon! The US side may have initiated the telephone call because of possible Chinese cooperation on the question of “Fentanyl” and lesser intercepts of American military assets by China. Also, China has dialled down previous dangerous rhetoric on Taiwan. U.S. and Chinese military officials reportedly met last week for a series of rare meetings in Hawaii focussed on operational safely and professionalism.
In the near term, it is the technology denial regime sought to be put in place by the Americans that is causing angst in Beijing. Xi Jinping said as much when he asserted that attempts to “de-risk” by the West were actually creating more risks. Going further, Xi warned that if the US insists on suppressing hi-tech development and depriving China of its legitimate right to develop, then it will not stand by idly. All this against the backdrop of the saga over Tik-Tok’s ownership issue being played out in the US Congress. Last month, American lawmakers introduced a bipartisan bill giving Chinese tech firm ByteDance 165 days to divest TikTok or else the app would no longer be available on app stores or accessible on US-based web hosting services.
US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is visiting China and she is clearly a darling of the media there. The media has extolled her ability to use chopsticks and her gourmet choice of cantonese dishes in restaurants. She also stated after meeting Premier Li Qiang that while relations were on a more stable footing than two years ago, it was important for both countries to have what she called “tough conversations”. One such issue is Chinese factory “overcapacity” in particular Electric Vehicles, solar panels and other green energy products. There is real fear in the West that as the Chinese economy stalls and domestic demand remains tepid, the Chinese will start dumping their products in external markets.
In another indication that China and America are condemned to co-exist, Xi Jinping met with key American executives on March 27 and let it be known that China is open for business, when in actual fact it is anything but. The former Dean of Harvard Kennedy School Graham Allison and the author of the famous book “Destined for War: Can America and China escape the Thucidides’s Trap?” also met Xi Jinping and Wang Yi. The reason for this special treatment is clear. Allison has emerged as the biggest advocate of Sino-American rapprochement (a la Kissinger one might add) arguing that war between the two countries is not inevitable. Indeed, rumour has it that Graham Allison is the brain behind recent moves for detente between the two countries. Allison says that he asked for clarification from Xi Jinping who while talking about Sino-American ties used the following metaphor “I am in you and you are in me” to US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. It is not entirely clear what Xi said to Allison. But the irrepressible Global Times goes on to quote Allison as saying that the US and China are like inseparable, conjoined Siamese twins. A case of mixed metaphor?
Diplomacy and Geopolitics 