This week, US President Joe Biden met his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping outside San Francisco, nearly a year to the day since their last chinwag in Bali. Much has happened since then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is also, not insignificantly, a little under a year away from the next US Presidential Election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The perfectly-timed meeting occurred on the fringes of the APAC meeting of leading Asian and Pacific nation leaders gathered for their annual summit but, of course, any US-China meeting \u2013 the last two genuine global superpowers – is always going to dominate proceedings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Like Royal Weddings and FIFA sponsorship announcements, these things don\u2019t just happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They take months to plan, choreograph, and facilitate. Both sides agree what will and won\u2019t be revealed publicly, what is strictly for private consumption only, and what and how suitable titbits will be reported to the global media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In addition to the bossmen\u2019s formal bilateral meeting, Biden and Xi\u2019s people meet, host lunches with various advisers, and side-bar conversations with corporate, military and community leaders take place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are many audiences watching and listening \u2013 from Beijing to Washington, Tehran to Moscow, Taipei to Tel Aviv.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And, especially early in an election year, there must be positive outcomes for both sides; addressing domestic and global policy, and because politics is show-business for the ugly, a healthy dose of positioning and posturing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This meeting didn\u2019t underperform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Perhaps the headline event was the formal agreement to start military-to-military communications again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Chinese had hung up the \u2018phone on the Pentagon after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan last summer and US planes shot down a Chinese spy-balloon earlier in the year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now, it was agreed to provide U.S. Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin with the new cell phone number for the next Chinese Defence Secretary as soon as a suitable replacement for former minister Li Shangfu can be found.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Li disappeared mysteriously last month and hasn\u2019t been seen since. That\u2019s politics, folks!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ever since Pelosi\u2019s visit, the waters around the Chinese-claimed island have been hot with military manoeuvres, fly overs and \u2018exercises\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the run up to the meeting, Pentagon officials reported that in the past couple of years, China’s military has engaged in more than 180 incidents of “coercive and risky operational behaviour<\/em>” against US assets in international airspace over the East and South China seas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lloyd Austin, who strategically wasn\u2019t at the meeting to not meet his non-existent counterpart, welcomed the news.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “I won’t make any predictions about China’s future behaviour,” he told reporters. “What I will say is that we will continue to need the mechanism to manage crises and make sure we prevent things from spiralling out of control from time to time.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Good. Tooled-up nuclear nations and \u2018spiralling out of control\u2019 is never a good combination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now that they had agreed to let the Generals and Defence leaders talk again, Taiwan was destined to be the next topic of conversation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here the art of \u2018political language\u2019, the careful choice of words, came to the fore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Biden reaffirmed the United States\u2019 \u201cOne China\u201d<\/em> policy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This acknowledges the People\u2019s Republic of China and recognises Taiwan as part of China based on a \u2018political communique\u2019 written in 1972.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Pretty clear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The US also believes any resolution to the Taiwan situation must be peaceful. \u201cThat\u2019s not going to change,\u201d said Biden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Speaking to reporters about the upcoming elections in Taiwan, Biden also said he \u201cexpects no interference\u201d from China\u2019s government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Biden then reiterated the US would continue to heavily arm Taiwan – as a deterrent \u2013 he explained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Xi warned Biden at the summit to stop arming Taiwan, saying \u201cStop arming Taiwan and support China\u2019s peaceful reunification.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n No talk of Taiwan\u2019s enormous and vital stranglehold on global microchip production was raised, and their carefully chosen words \u2013 vital to both sides domestic audiences \u2013 also strategically avoided the elephant in the room \u2013 \u201cIf Chinese soldiers do venture onto Taiwanese soil, what will America do<\/em>?\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After a quick coffee and croissant, Biden and Xi agreed to take action on the most-deadly trend threatening Americans today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Last year more than 107,000 Americans \u2013 nearly 300 a day \u2013 died from drug overdoses directly linked to Fentanyl. That\u2019s five times the number of gun related homicides in America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The drug is mass-manufactured in Chinese laboratories, shipped to the US and cut with cocaine, heroin, meth and other street drugs as well as being used to lace counterfeit prescription drugs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Under the new agreement, China will go directly after specific chemical companies that make fentanyl source products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s going to save lives,\u201d Biden said, adding how much he appreciated Xi\u2019s \u201ccommitment\u201d on this issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Biden also asked the Chinese President to use his influence to lean on Tehran to stop them escalating the conflict in Gaza and called on Xi to withhold military supplies and support to Moscow in its war with Ukraine. Time will tell if those requests are heeded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So far, Biden had done most of the talking and much of the asking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For action on Fentanyl, Iran and Russia, the Chinese President would surely want something in return.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Xi was in San Francisco to talk to Asian and Pacific leaders against a backdrop of economic slowdown in China. The vast nation has growing debt, is struggling to secure foreign investment, and with an aging population and hindered by COVID 19 flare ups is falling behind in the technology and innovation race.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Specifically, Xi wanted Biden to lift or lighten the sanctions and restrictions on export allowing new technology to kickstart China\u2019s economy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Chinese officials claimed the economic sanctions were \u201cstifling China\u2019s technological progress as a move to contain China\u2019s development and deprive the Chinese people<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n With one eye on businesses and voters in key tech-states like California, Texas and Florida, Biden is unlikely to waive the restrictions on the export of high technology to China while US companies still fear their innovation is being reverse engineered, global copyrights are flaunted, and \u2018commercial strengths\u2019<\/em> stolen by Chinese state entities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But some ground was ceded shortly after the meeting when the fabulously-named \u2018Chinese Ministry of Public Security’s Institute of Forensic Science\u2019<\/em> was removed from the list of agencies under the trade sanction \u2013 apparently so they can cooperate more closely to deliver that promise to clamp down on the Fentanyl manufacturing businesses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You take a little, you give a little.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The meeting ended. The two President\u2019s relaxed, the advisers and diplomats congratulated themselves, the hard yards had been fought over and relations were starting to thaw.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then Biden called Xi a \u2018dictator\u2019 and the Chinese were outraged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n See you next year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This week, the world’s two most powerful men met in California. Martin looks at what was discussed, what was agreed and what it may or may not mean for the rest of us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":83873,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1630,1305,21,1294,1311,2886,1307,2998,1308,1310,1309,2019,16,1980],"tags":[1631,1470,1469],"class_list":["post-83872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-a-week-in-america","category-birmingham","category-blogs","category-cheshire","category-lancashire","category-lancashire-cheshire","category-leeds","category-leeds-newcastle","category-liverpool","category-london","category-manchester","category-newcastle","category-news","category-wolverhampton","tag-america","tag-joe-biden","tag-president"],"views":725,"yoast_head":"\n