STATESIDE STORIES: Biden and Chinese Leader Meet

China President Xi Jinping, left, sits across from US President Joe Biden at the Asia-Pacific
Economic Cooperation Summit, Moscone Convention Center, San Francisco

Xi’s aims were clear: to earn US policy concessions in exchange for promises of cooperation,
an easing of bilateral tensions that will allow more focus on economic growth,
and a chance to invite foreign investors who increasingly shun China.

by Mary Foran

Last week at the Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit held in San Francisco, US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping met to discuss strengthening communication and managing competition.

The decaying city was cleaned up especially for the Chinese leader’s visit, with homeless camps swept and garbage collected and hauled away. Many complained that the clean-up could have been done before the Communist dictator’s high-level visit.

Decaying city gets cleaned up for the high-level visit

Biden and the communist leader reached agreements over fentanyl, military communications and artificial intelligence.

Xi’s aims were clear: to earn US policy concessions in exchange for promises of cooperation, an easing of bilateral tensions that will allow more focus on economic growth, and a chance to invite foreign investors who increasingly shun China.

“Xi Jinping may have made the calculation that overhyping the American threat does China and his standing in the party itself more harm than good,” according to Drew Thompson, former Pentagon official, now a scholar at National University of Singapore. “The fact that we are debating  whether China is investible is a real problem for China.”

Detainees listening to speeches in a re-education camp, Lop County, Xinjiang Uyghur Region, April 2017

In the mix is the question of the Biden Administration’s commitment to pressuring China over the alleged genocide of Uyghurs. “This undermines the credibility of our entity list and our moral authority,” said a spokesperson for the Republican-led House of Representatives’s select committee on China.

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US-CHINA SUMMIT White House video (CC BY3.0)

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Images
> APEC photos, including featured image/Official White House photos (https://www.facebook.com/WhiteHouse/), CC BY3.0
> Quote mark/Oakus 53, CC BY-SA4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
> Decaying San Francisco/btwashburn, CC BY2.0 via Wikipedia
> Detainees in Xinjiang Uyghur Region (low-resolution, downscaled from original image)/Original image creator: 牙生. Fair use via Wikipedia