The conversation, lasting more than three hours, by videoconference, was described by Joe Biden as “sincere and frank”. On Monday evening, the American president held a virtual summit with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, as relations between China, a rising world power, and the United States, a giant which is weakening from within, deteriorate.
A necessary meeting, according to the entourage of the American president to build between the two countries, a “responsible competition” by moving away in the future from “miscalculations” and “misunderstandings” that could trigger a conflict, that it is “intentional or not”.
Autopsy of an attempted reconciliation …
My old friend “
The image of the confrontation which had developed between the two powers under the previous American government and which continued with the arrival of Joe Biden at the White House had to be quickly shattered. And this is what Xi Jinping did, in the public minutes of the meeting, calling Joe Biden an “old friend”, or “lao peng you”, in Mandarin.
The expression is not trivial. It draws on the dialectic of the Chinese Communist Party by calling on all party members and government officials to consider an interlocutor with greater consideration.
At the turn of the century, it was with these words that former Chinese President Jiang Zemin welcomed former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, thus giving a strong signal for a more collaborative relationship with Canada and especially the assurance of serious listening to Chinese institutions involved in this relationship.
The Taiwanese case
The summit between two strong men did not seek to trace common paths, but rather to assert respective positions and this is what was done on the situation in Taiwan. The democratic island of 23 million inhabitants is in the sights of Beijing which, after the iron fist posed on Hong Kong, aspires to bring back this territory, militarily supported by Washington, under its folds.
In recent weeks, Chinese air raids into Taiwan’s perimeter have escalated tensions. However, for the United States, the status of the island is not negotiable and Joe Biden reaffirmed it by opposing “firmly” to anything that would “undermine peace and stability in the Strait. of Taiwan ”.
A red line which revealed another: Xi Jinping, for his part, warned his interlocutor of a “dangerous trend” which prevails in the United States and which consists, according to him, of “using Taiwan to control China, ”which“ is like playing with fire, ”he said.
Balance of forces
“An improbable war, an impossible peace”. The relationship between the United States and the USSR, during another Cold War, as defined in The great schism in 1948 by political scientist Raymond Aron, now suits the Sino-American duo who agreed at this summit to open “strategic” discussions on arms control between the two nuclear powers.
That’s what Joe Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on Tuesday.
This formal dialogue on the issue of armaments is becoming increasingly crucial as the Pentagon published a report a few weeks ago on the acceleration of China’s nuclear program. Beijing also carried out a hypersonic missile test in August, opening the door to Chinese strikes on territories far from its close borders.
Human rights
Out of politeness, Xi Jinping said he was “willing to engage in a dialogue on human rights issues.” “On the basis of mutual respect,” he said. The White House said it had expressed its concerns to China “about the practices [de la Chine] in the Xinjiang region, Tibet and Hong Kong, and human rights in general ”.
Dozens of minority defense organizations accuse Beijing of having organized a systematic crackdown against a million Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang, in the northwest of the country. They would be thrown into “re-education camps”, which China denies. Concurring reports on these violations, however, fuel calls for a diplomatic boycott of the upcoming Beijing Winter Olympics, which are due to be held next February.
The Chinese president opened the door to dialogue, but not too much, reiterating his usual line on a question of “rights” which cannot be used “as a pretext to interfere in the internal affairs of another country”, a- he clarified.
Trade tensions
The timid advance on the trade front lies in a promise made by Xi Jinping to facilitate the entry of the American business community in China, beyond the restrictions linked to the pandemic. Nothing more.
Nothing, however, on the exchanges of students, researchers, journalists, always problematic between the two countries.
Joe Biden, for his part, did not seek to emerge from the trade war launched in 2018 by his predecessor Donald Trump, which still imposes punitive tariffs on a large number of Chinese products.
Washington even maintains these complaints about the limited access of the Chinese market to foreign companies and about the subsidies paid by Beijing to its state-owned companies. The American president even recalled the need “to protect American workers […] against unfair trade and economic practices ”. Words without ambiguity which confirm that the rapprochement can be cordial and smiling, but that the truce between the two steps is still far from being achieved.
With Agence France-Presse