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Global Impact: what does a post-Apec US-China relationship, and their global competition, look like?
- Global Impact is a weekly curated newsletter featuring a news topic originating in China with a significant macro impact for our newsreaders around the world
- In this week’s issue, we look to the future of the US-China relationship following the meeting between presidents Xi Jinping and Joe Biden in November
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Nearly three months after the long-awaited summit between Xi Jinping and Joe Biden in California, it’s time to check on how the meeting has changed the bilateral relationship.
Although far from rapprochement or a reversion to robust economic engagement, the two sides have at least followed through with high-level meetings, with Air Force General CQ Brown, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, speaking with his Chinese counterpart General Liu Zhenli in December.
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Those were the first senior military talks between Washington and Beijing since the Chinese government halted all such engagements in response to then-House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August 2022, and the repeated warnings that the severed communication raised the risk of a military conflict.
Broken ice on this front appeared to move Beijing away from the position that some analysts were expecting: that Chinese government officials felt military-to-military dialogue would embolden the US to maintain its presence in the Taiwan Strait, as well as the east and south China seas.
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Xi Jinping, Joe Biden hold talks on sidelines of Apec summit to ease strained US-China ties
Xi Jinping, Joe Biden hold talks on sidelines of Apec summit to ease strained US-China ties
Still, analysts saw restored communication in the wake of the Xi-Biden summit as a “low bar for success” and few expected them to end tensions in the South China Sea, where the strain has been most acute.
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