“Biden pushes for stable U.S. relationship with China during summit with Xi”, PBS NewsHour

Published November 16, 2023

Nick Schifrin, Nov 17, 2017

Wednesday in San Francisco, President Biden met face-to-face with Chinese leader Xi Jinping for the first time in a year. The two leaders are announcing agreements on military communication and a crackdown on the Chinese chemicals used to make fentanyl. But as Nick Schifrin reports, the goal was less about breakthroughs and more about stabilizing a troubled relationship.

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Amna Nawaz:Today, in San Francisco, President Biden met face-to-face with Chinese President Xi Jinping for the first time in a year. The two leaders are announcing agreements on military communication and a crackdown on the Chinese chemicals used to make the lethal drug fentanyl.But, as Nick Schifrin reports from the summit site, the goal was less about breakthroughs and more about stabilizing a troubled relationship.
Question:President Biden.
Nick Schifrin:Today in a handshake.Joe Biden, President of the United States: It’s been a great honor.
Nick Schifrin:And a four-hour summit, the leaders of the world’s largest economies, most advanced militaries and most consequential competition said they wanted their relationship to be stable.
Joe Biden:It is paramount that you and I understand each other clearly, leader to leader, with no misconceptions or miscommunication. We have to ensure that competition does not veer into conflict.
Xi Jinping, Chinese President (through interpreter):I’m still of the view that major country competition is not the prevailing trend of current times and cannot solve the problems facing China and the United States or the world at large.
Nick Schifrin:The two sides are agreeing to what a senior U.S. official called a comprehensive set of military communication, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin with his Chinese counterpart, a job currently empty, the top U.S. Indo-Pacific military commander with his counterpart, and working-level groups to discuss operational safety.The idea is to ensure communication, even in crisis. The U.S. believes close calls between Chinese and American ships, what the U.S. calls 180 unsafe encounters between Chinese and American jets just in the last two years, and the actual collisions of Chinese ships with Filipino boats in the South China Sea could cause a crisis.
Man:It is not the moon.
Nick Schifrin:The lack of communication has already caused concern. A senior U.S. official said, when the Chinese spy balloon crossed the U.S. earlier this year — quote — “We had no way to really communicate with the Chinese.”
Evan Medeiros, Former National Security Council Official:The way I think about the mil-mil relationship is that it’s a necessary, but not sufficient condition for managing strategic competition.
Nick Schifrin:Evan Medeiros was President Obama’s top National Security Council official for Asia. He calls better communications important, but warns, China views them differently than the U.S.
Evan Medeiros:They’re skeptical of it, which is one of the reasons why they’re so quick to cancel it. I think that they think, in particular, the crisis management part of the military-to-military channels are just a way for the Americans to create the conditions for them to push China even more.
Nick Schifrin:Biden and Xi are also announcing steps to try and limit the proliferation of fentanyl, a hundred times more potent than morphine, and linked to hundreds of thousands of American deaths.Fentanyl is made from chemicals in China exported to Latin American cartels that convert them to drugs. A senior U.S. official says Beijing is making — quote — “deeply consequential decisions,” although Beijing has made previous promises on fentanyl.In exchange, the U.S. is reportedly lifting sanctions on an arm of China’s Ministry of Public Security. But U.S.-China divisions remain, most notably over Taiwan. Taipei confirmed for the first time this week the U.S. was helping Taiwan train to defend the island. Beijing considers Taipei a breakaway province and has increased its military intimidation.Today, President Biden is warning China not to interfere with Taiwan’s January presidential election. Beijing labels the front-runner, William Lai, a separatist. But senior U.S. officials hope Beijing’s aggression toward Taiwan could be — quote — “inhibited” by internal problems. Rare protests in 2021 at the offices of the real estate developer Evergrande revealed deep dissatisfaction with the Chinese economy.Today, more foreign direct investment is flowing out of the country than coming in. It’s a sign international investors are concerned by Beijing’s economic management, targeting of Western firms and their employees and rising labor costs, says lawyer John Ramig, who specializes in international business.
John Ramig, Attorney:A few years ago, everyone believed that, to be competitive, you had to have a presence in China. Today, I haven’t had anyone come to me, honestly, for three years asking to, could you help me make an investment into China?
Nick Schifrin:U.S. officials believe that trend has helped lead to a Chinese charm offensive ahead of the summit, including a recent English-language article in state-run Xinhua featuring Xi Jinping’s decade-old interest in — quote — “friendship with America.”Xi is expected to take that message to American CEOs tonight. He will tell them China is still a good investment.U.S. officials here at the summit site are eager for more communication and contacts, but they say they’re not returning to diplomacy of the past. The overriding context of the relationship, they say, today is competition.The administration’s critics today said that this kind of engagement reinforces than — rather than resolves China’s coercive behavior.
Amna Nawaz:Nick, so what about this announcement you have reported on about military-to-military communications? How significant is that?
Nick Schifrin:Well, as we reported, Amna, the U.S. is thinking that this is particularly important in times of crisis, but it’s unclear that it will affect what you also just saw, those Chinese jets, those Chinese ships coming so close to U.S. military assets.The bottom line is, analysts believe Beijing harasses U.S. military assets because it doesn’t want them operating so close to Chinese territory, even though the U.S. says they’re in international waters. And the fact is, communication won’t change that.
Amna Nawaz:And what do we know about any conversation between the two leaders on the ongoing conflicts catching the world’s attention, specifically in Gaza and in Ukraine?
Nick Schifrin:U.S. officials and President Biden today is reinforcing this message, hope that China can be helpful when it comes to the Middle East by talking to its partner Iran and encouraging it not to expand the conflict.On Ukraine, U.S. officials believe China is pretty much all in politically when it comes to supporting Russia diplomatically, of course, and militarily reinforcing its military, but stopping just short of sending weapons to Russia for its war on Ukraine.And, again, Amna, nothing today is going to change that either.
Amna Nawaz:And, Nick, you also reported that, particularly on Taiwan, there are still divisions between the two nations. Is there anything being discussed that could bridge that gap?
Nick Schifrin:Yes, in a word today, no.I mean, Chinese officials tell me that they find U.S. behavior around Taiwan, not only the navigation patrols that the U.S. has between Taiwan and the mainland, but also the president’s previous comments about supporting Taiwan and boosting military help to Taiwan, that is destabilizing.The U.S. is just going to repeat, according to U.S. officials, what it has said in the past, that it believes in the One China policy, believes in the assurances that it has given Beijing in the past. And they are hoping that that previous language they have said is stabilizing.But, frankly, Amna, it is unlikely to reassure Beijing. And so, yet again, we are talking about something where divisions are not going to be papered over at this summit at all.
Amna Nawaz:Finally, Nick, we know that Xi Jinping’s arrival was met with a number of protests in and around San Francisco. Do we know if the Chinese leader saw any of those?
Nick Schifrin:It’s a good question, Amna.I don’t know if he saw them personally, but Chinese diplomats took pains, according to U.S. officials, before the arrival to make sure that they asked U.S. officials exactly what Xi Jinping would see looking out of his windows going to each of these events.And, as an aside, our bus actually had to go around protests outside this summit site, which is completely locked down. There is, of course, inordinate focus in the Chinese system on the leader, on Xi Jinping. But Xi especially has consolidated control. U.S. officials believe that he really is making his own judgment.And that makes this kind of high-level diplomacy today, this kind of summit all the more important and all the more reminiscent, frankly, of early Cold War diplomacy between the United States and the Soviet Union, Amna.
Amna Nawaz:That’s Nick Schifrin reporting for us tonight from San Francisco.Nick, thank you. Good to see you.