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China Briefing | From 5G to infrastructure, healthy US-China competition will benefit the world
- While the Biden administration sees competition as a key theme in US-China relations, it’s also open to working with Beijing on areas such as climate change
- US-backed efforts to counter China’s Belt and Road Initiative will also help improve infrastructure and access for developing nations from Africa to Latin America
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The evolving relationship between the two leading powers has had the world on edge ever since former US President Donald Trump launched a trade war against China in 2018 and sent bilateral ties spiralling.
The open hostilities have continued into the 10 months of Joe Biden’s presidency. All this has raised the frightening prospect of comprehensive decoupling, a new Cold War, or even a hot war over Taiwan.
Thus, the international community heaved a collective sigh of relief in November when Chinese President Xi Jinping and Biden finally had their first face-to-face meeting.
The virtual summit, which lasted three-and-half hours, may not have produced any tangible results but its significance should not be underestimated.
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To begin with, the summit was never meant to be result-oriented but focusing on the strategic, overarching and fundamental issues in the relationship of the world’s two largest economies. Moreover, both leaders ended the meeting with calls for more cooperation and emphasising ways to avoid conflict.
As Biden put it, there was a “need for common-sense guardrails to ensure the competition does not veer into conflict and to keep lines of communication open”.
To be sure, given the complex and evolving nature of the relationship, nobody should expect US-China ties to be smooth-sailing from now on. But the summit has succeeded in putting a floor under the spiralling ties as the both countries are moving towards cooperation and competition, away from confrontation.
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