The day following the Biden-Xi meeting, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index dived as Asia’s worst-performing market. Over 4,200 stocks were in the red on the Chinese mainland stock exchanges.
The two leaders have agreed to a handful of bilateral dialogue mechanisms encompassing finance, commerce, export control, tariffs, climate change, and defense. Such agreements are merely agreements to keep talking. The only substantial agreement that was achieved was the joint crackdown on the fentanyl supply chain from China. The compromise was only possible because the White House agreed to remove China’s Public Security Research Institute - a research arm of the Chinese security complex - from the US’s blacklist. Even this little progress could be fleeting, assured by no enforcement mechanisms.
The much-anticipated Biden-Xi effort to restrict the use of AI in nuclear arsenal and autonomous weapons was not achieved. Instead, the two sides agreed to keep the dialogue open on AI governance.
President Xi did not receive the White House’s official invitation for a state visit, a status China has surely desired. While President Xi received a warm reception from President Biden, Indonesian President Joko Widodo was honored at the White House.
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As little as the US and Chinese leaders agreed on the bilateral agenda, even less consensus was brought to the broader global conflicts, including wars in Gaza and Ukraine. There seems to be little enthusiasm to jointly put an end to the global conflicts, given the divergent beliefs and global interests held by the two states.
When President Biden referred to President Xi as a “dictator” at the press conference following the sideline meeting, all the goodwill shown in the garden walk, the long handshake, and the amicable photo-ops quickly eclipsed.
Indo-Pacific economic attempt
Both Presidents Xi and Biden seem to have been more focused on making other breakthroughs on the sidelines of the APEC Summit. President Xi spoke in front of hundreds of US senior business executives – a lineup with the league of Elon Musk and Tim Cook – at a business gala hosted by China-friendly US associations. President Xi was in a cheerful mood.
He told the US executives China is a cooperation partner, not a competitive rival, for which he received a standing ovation. Between selfies and handshakes, the Chinese leader tried to woo American businesses back to China, in order to stabilize the domestic economic turmoil and to counter the DC political headwinds.
President Biden gathered 13 state representatives from the US’s newly conceived Indo-Pacific Economic Framework on the sideline of the APEC Summit. Over a meeting that lasted for 30 minutes, the new bloc agreed on three key elements of the IPEF - combating corruption, investing in sustainability, and building supply chain resilience, and only failed to agree on a regional free trade agreement.
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When President Xi told President Biden that there was no timeline for Beijing to take over Taiwan militarily, neither in 2027 nor in 2035, and “no one has discussed this with me,” he appeared annoyed at Washington DC’s fashioning an industry of predicting the timing of a war over Taiwan.
