Tuesday’s meeting offers a chance to ease tensions, although neither side is expecting a breakthrough
A series of meetings have laid the groundwork for the summit and one source says the two sides have resumed efforts to address a series of grievances
Chinese President Xi Jinping and his US counterpart Joe Biden are expected to use a limited window of opportunity to ease tensions when they hold their virtual summit next week.
In what is expected to be their most extensive meeting since Biden took office, both sides have indicated their hope to use direct engagement between the two top leaders to stabilise ties amid their two countries’ intense rivalry across a broad range of areas from geopolitics to trade.
Neither side expects any specific outcomes or a joint statement from the meeting, but Xi is expected to use the meeting to discuss the Taiwan security situation and calls for a boycott of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, according to people who have been briefed on the preparations for the meeting.
The summit, scheduled for early Tuesday morning Beijing time, comes after Xi consolidated his status at home at the Communist Party’s sixth plenum.
The meeting of the party’s top leadership passed a rare resolution on the party’s history that praised its direction under Xi’s leadership – putting him on a par with Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping and paving the way for a third term next year.
Next year both Xi and Biden are likely to spend a lot of energy focusing on their respective domestic agendas in the run-up to the 20th Party Congress and midterm elections, so next week’s meeting provides a rare space for the two to calm tensions and discuss the next stage of their relationship.
The virtual meeting comes amid simmering tensions over Taiwan and US concerns about China’s growing nuclear capabilities.
On Tuesday People’s Liberation Army joint forces conducted combat readiness drills in waters directly across from Taiwan, as a US congressional delegation arrived on the island for a surprise visit slammed by Beijing as a “rude interference” in its internal affairs.
US officials have recently admitted that a US special-operations unit and a contingent of marines have been secretly training military forces on Taiwan.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in a phone call on Saturday that Taiwanese independence was the “biggest threat to the peace and stability of the Taiwan Strait”.
Wang also said the summit is a major event in international relations. “The two sides should meet each other halfway ... ensuring that the meeting will be smooth and successful, and push Sino-US relations back on the track of healthy and stable development,” he said, according to a Chinese Foreign Ministry statement.
As Beijing begins final preparations for the Winter Olympics in February, calls for a boycott over human rights concerns — including Xinjiang and Hong Kong — have grown.
The Group of Seven nations are reportedly discussing a possible diplomatic boycott of the games, something that lawmakers in the US, Britain and European Union have also called for.
However, relations between China and the US have shown signs of improvement since a fiery exchange between their top diplomats in Alaska in March.
Xi and Biden last spoke in a September phone call, and their virtual summit was agreed last month when China’s foreign policy chief Yang Jiechi met US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan in Switzerland.
One source said the two nations have quietly resumed working-level dialogues to discuss a list of major grievances outlined when US deputy secretary of state Wendy Sherman met Chinese diplomats in Tianjin in July.
The source also said the two sides have agreed in principle to ease visa restrictions on students in the near future.
Lu Xiang, an expert on US affairs with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said despite the many frictions facing the two nations, the summit would help set the tone for improving relations in the coming months.
