The eagerly awaited meeting between US President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart, President Xi Jinping, is set to take place on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Leadership Summit in San Francisco in the third week of November. The White House has officially confirmed this meeting. The leaders of the US and China are expected to explore ways to “reduce misunderstanding, expand common ground and pursue cooperation that will benefit both sides”. Definitely, the much-awaited upcoming meeting between Biden and Xi has generated significant interest in view of the ongoing complexities in US-China relations. But the question being asked in global quarters at the same time is whether this high-level engagement will be able to put the ties between Washington and Beijing back on track. Will Biden and Xi be able to achieve the goal to stabilise China-US relations and return them to the track of healthy, stable, and sustainable development?
The answers to these questions are negative. No major breakthrough is expected to be achieved in the meeting between Biden and Xi. Normalisation in US-China ties is unlikely to be seen even after this top-level meeting, given Beijing’s track record of saying one thing and doing another. It is nothing but an illusion to think that China will cooperate with the US on key global issues. China is not going to relent on its aggressive stand vis-à-vis the Indo-Pacific and South China Sea. The development that cannot be overlooked ahead of the upcoming Biden-Xi meeting is that tensions in the South China Sea are on the boil after the Chinese navy’s aggressive behaviour towards Philippine vessels in the region. Beijing expressed “serious concerns” over US military presence in the region and frequent reconnaissance missions targeting China. In return, the US expressed concern over the Chinese navy’s behaviour towards Philippine vessels in the South China Sea, as the Southeast Asian nation reported Chinese vessels swarming south of an oil and gas-rich area in contested waters.
The other issue on which major differences are being reported between the US and China is the Middle East crisis. The US has asked China to take a more constructive role in the Middle East amid the war between Israel and Hamas. The US suggestion is in fact being seen as an attempt by the Biden administration to mount pressure on Beijing to make sure that Iran, a Chinese partner, stays out of the ongoing Israel-Hamas war to prevent it from snowballing into a regional conflict. Obviously, China is not going to do anything like that. Similarly, the upcoming election in Taiwan in January 2024 is another development that might put the US and China on the path of confrontation and tension. China may be seeking to influence the election’s outcome in its favour. Xi expects the US not to favour any candidate or political party in Taiwan and also not to support Taiwan’s independence. Biden is not going to backtrack on the US longstanding policy of opposing any unilateral changes to the Taiwan Strait’s status quo and outside interference in Taiwan’s electoral process.
This does not obviously go down well with the Chinese side. Meanwhile, pressure is mounting on Biden to raise the issue of Tibet-China conflict resolution with the Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Several organisations in the US and an advocacy group International Campaign for Tibet have urged Biden to raise this issue with Xi Jinping. These are some of the issues of geostrategic significance over which the US and China have had serious differences. The contentious issues have prevented the two countries from finding a common ground. Biden and Xi will find it difficult to iron out these differences in the meeting. Then, there are issues related to trade, economy, commerce and technology on which China and the US are not getting along well with each other. While some diplomatic establishments in various parts of the world may be hoping that the meeting in San Francisco will pave the way for the two sides to handle important issues in future, in the backdrop of several issues being highly contentious and complex in nature, the meeting is unlikely to reach any meaningful conclusion.