Joe Biden, Xi Jinping agree to maintain hotline, resume high-level military contact

Tribune News Service

Sandeep Dikshit

New Delhi, November 16

US President Joe Biden and China’s Xi Jinping agreed on several confidence-building measures, including maintaining a hotline between themselves and resumption of high-level military-to-military communications to avoid miscalculations on either side that could lead to accidents.

Editorial: Biden-Xi summit

Speaking at a press conference after their meeting at a country house 40 km from San Francisco, Biden said he and Xi agreed to curb the flow of Chinese chemicals used in the US production of fentanyl and both sides would further discuss the risks and safety issues with artificial intelligence (AI).

Room for both

It is not realistic for one side to try to shape the other. Planet Earth is big enough for both countries to succeed. — Xi Jinping, Chinese President

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To pursue diplomacy

We’re going to continue to preserve and pursue high-level diplomacy with the PRC to keep communication open. — Joe Biden, US President

“In the months ahead, we’re going to continue to preserve and pursue high-level diplomacy with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) — in both directions — to keep the lines of communication open, including between President Xi and me. He and I agreed that either one of us can pick up the phone and call directly,” he said. But in the concluding minutes of the press conference, Biden veered off script: “Look, he’s a dictator in the sense that he’s a guy who runs a country that is a communist country that’s based on a form of government totally different than ours.”

China termed the remark “extermely wrong and politcal manipulation”. Xi, before four hours of talks with Biden, said: “It is not realistic for one side to try to shape the other. Planet Earth is big enough for both countries to succeed.” The first time Biden called Xi a dictator was in June and the Chinese response was to call the remarks “absurd and a provocation”.

Xi noted that bilateral ties had not been “smooth sailing” but “turning our backs on each other is not realistic.” For most of the year China and the US have sparred, beginning with the “balloon incident”, followed by US arms sales to Taiwan and its ban on Chinese tech companies. Chinese and US warplanes nearly collided over the highly contested South China Sea.

Later in the year, the two sides began exploring a reset through high-level contacts. Xi was motivated by western threats of industrial decoupling from China, which is already beset by slowing growth. Biden wanted to discourage China from backing Russia militarily in the Ukraine conflict as well as dial down tensions on Taiwan when the US military is involved in the two wars. Both leaders, however, spoke of a relationship that would continue to be difficult. “We haven’t always agreed, but they’ve always been straightforward,” Biden said. Calling the China-US ties “the most important bilateral relationship in the world”, Xi said both sides could either enhance cooperation for global security and prosperity or cling to a zero-sum mentality at the “risk of inciting confrontation and dividing the world”.

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