SINGAPORE: The virtual meeting between US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday (Nov 16) was said not to have delivered any major breakthroughs, but this milestone was of great importance to both sides.
It offered a venue for frank exchange, opened up channels of communications and identified areas of cooperation and concerns.
In China’s views, the meeting was a success: Hua Chunying, spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs tweeted that the meeting had been “wide-ranging, in-depth, candid, constructive, substantive and productive” and helped “increase mutual understanding”.
Xinhua news agency carried a long report that extensively quoted from what Xi had said during the meeting. The White House posted a similar readout of the meeting focused on Biden’s remarks.
Both also clearly a domestic audience in mind. US television news showed Biden opening the meeting, whereas Chinese television news showed Xi speaking first.
It was a longer-than-expected, nearly four-hour long meeting with key officials from both sides present.
President Biden took the meeting along with secretary of state Antony Blinken, national security advisor Jake Sullivan, National Security Council (NSC) Indo-Pacific coordinator Kurt Campbell, NSC senior director for China Laura Rosenberger, NSC director for China Jon Czin and Treasury secretary Janet Yellen in the White House.
Xi Jinping, joined by state councillors Yang Jiechi and Wang Yi, vice-premier Liu He and Ding Xuexiang, director of the general office of the Communist Party of China (CPC), spoke from the same room in the Great Hall of the People where Xi and Biden had held bilateral talks back in 2013, when Biden was vice-president in the Barack Obama administration.
Seven months from a heated Alaska “AnchoRage” meeting that saw a confrontational exchange of rebukes, the positive atmospherics of the Xi-Biden summit have turned the bilateral relationship around and set it on a stronger foundation.
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