JAKARTA – With Russian President Vladimir Putin staying close to home, it was left to a face-to-face meeting between US president Joe Biden and Chinese supremo Xi Jinping to provide the headline act at Bali’s G20 Summit where the prospect of a joint communique looks hardly on the cards.
On the surface at least, the two leaders appear to have delivered beyond expectations, agreeing to establish a series of joint working groups to address a litany of contentious issues, ranging from Taiwan and human rights to trade and technology transfers.
Biden indicated the talks would be held at the highest levels. “We agreed we would have appropriate Cabinet members and others to sit and meet with one another to discuss the details of every issue that was raised – and we raised a lot of issues,” he said.
Without going to specifics, he specifically mentioned North Korea, saying a team of senior security advisers and the Pentagon would be engaged with their Chinese counterparts over what to do about reducing tensions on the divided peninsula.
The US president revealed he would be sending Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Beijing in the coming weeks to begin the process of keeping open the lines of communication and identifying what he had previously called “red lines,” particularly over Taiwan.
“We are going to compete vigorously, but I am not looking for conflict. I’m looking to manage this competition responsibly,” he told reporters after the three-hour meeting, which by his calculation brought to 80 hours the time the pair have met over the past decade.
Buoyed by the Democrat Party’s surprisingly robust showing in the mid-term elections, Biden had said he was “coming in stronger” in his first encounter with Xi as president, which the Chinese leader’s spokesperson characterized as “in-depth, candid and constructive.”
“We covered an awful lot of territory and he was as straight with me as has been in the past,” the president told reporters, adding that for his part “I want to be clear that I mean what I say, and I say what I mean.”
Biden ruled out any prospect of a new Cold War and said he didn’t believe there was an imminent threat on the part of China to invade Taiwan, despite increased People’s Liberation Army (PLA) exercises around the island following House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s controversial visit last August.
“Our ‘One-China’ policy has not changed,” he added. “We oppose any unilateral change in the status by either side and we are committed to maintaining peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait. I’m convinced he (Xi) understood exactly what I was saying, and I understood what he was saying.”
On North Korea, Biden said he wasn’t sure China could control unpredictable dictator Kim Jong Il, but he said he told Xi he thought the Chinese had an obligation to attempt to persuade Pyongyang to refrain from conducting nuclear and long-range missile tests.
“I’m confident China is not looking for North Korea to engage in further escalation, Biden said, warning that further provocative acts by Pyongyang risked the US taking more defensive actions that would not be directed against China but would send a clear message to North Korea.
US officials have said there have been hours of quiet diplomacy behind the scenes over the past two months aimed at repairing ties between the two superpowers. “These meetings do not take place in isolation, they are part of a very sustained process,” one administration source was quoted as saying.
Biden and Xi have held five phone or video calls since Biden became president in early 2021. They had last met in person when Biden was vice president in 2015, but his efforts to build a personal relationship with the Chinese leader began four years earlier during a visit to Beijing.
Relations have deteriorated significantly since then to perhaps their lowest point, exacerbated by rising tensions over Taiwan and the South China Sea and, more recently, by a US ban on advanced semiconductors that is described as a national security issue.
Goldman Sachs forecasts that the ban will shave a quarter of a percentage point off China’s economic growth in 2023, at a time when it is already dealing with the fallout from Xi’s “zero-Covid” policy, which he has clung to from the beginning.
The Biden administration is still considering whether to roll back some Trump-era tariffs on Chinese consumer goods as officials weigh whether the move to address inflation will also have the effect of lessening economic pressure on China.
Xi and Putin have drawn closer together over the past few years because of their shared mistrust of the West, but Xi has been uncomfortable with the Russian president’s nuclear rhetoric and the economic fallout from the prolonged Ukraine conflict.
Biden said in his discussions with Xi about Russian aggression, which is likely to overshadow the two-day G20 summit, “we reaffirmed our belief that the use and threat of nuclear weapons is totally unacceptable.”
Asked about Ukraine’s recapture of the southern city of Kherson on the eve of the summit, the president described it as “a significant victory and I can’t do anything but applaud the tenacity of the Ukrainian people and military. It has been amazing.”
Putin’s absence was long predicted, but with a Russian delegation led by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in the room the geopolitical fallout from the Ukraine war threatens to diminish efforts at the summit to tackle a growing global food and energy crisis.
Lavrov walked out of a G20 foreign ministers meeting in July after his Western counterparts blamed the Russian invasion for disrupting the supply of wheat and other grain from one of the world’s leading bread baskets.
“Western leaders should not use the G20 as an opportunity to condemn Russia, but must try to find some common ground with the broader G20 on steps to contain the war,” said International Crisis Group UN director Richard Gowan.
“If all Western powers want to do in Bali is belittle Russia,” he said, “they will find that a lot of non-Western colleagues will not play along” – a reference to countries like China, India and South Africa which have declined to impose sanctions on Moscow and abstained in UN votes on the war.
Analysts say the most constructive thing the leaders can do is press for the continuation of the UN-brokered Black Sea Grain Initiative when it comes up for renewal of November 19. So far more than 500 bulk carriers have used the vital humanitarian corridor.
Shawn W Crispin provided reporting from Bangkok