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In their first conversation in seven months, President Biden spoke by phone with Chinese President Xi Jinping Thursday evening from the Treaty Room inside the White House residence. The approximately 90-minute call was made by Mr Biden and prompted by what is essentially his exasperation that lower-level Chinese officials did not want to have substantive conversations in meetings with members of his administration. .
A senior administration official told reporters that one of the challenges in US-China interactions to date is that the feeling that “they are playing for the press” and using interactions with officials of the Biden administration as attempts at propaganda rather than substance. The tone of Thursday night’s appeal was described as “respectful” while still being candid and familiar.
The president reiterated that he wanted to keep the channels of communication open so that the two countries “do not involuntarily find themselves in conflict”. The purpose of the call was to have a strategic conversation on how to handle the competition between the two world powers. The official also said the phone call was a test – to see if conversations at the highest level would be more effective, given Xi’s consolidation of power.
Mr. Biden has repeatedly mentioned his personal familiarity with Xi. He told CBS News’s Norah O’Donnell in February, “I had 24-25 hours of private meetings with [Xi] when I was vice-president, I traveled 17,000 miles with him. I know him very well. “
But the two presidents have yet to hold a face-to-face meeting, and US-China relations have been unraveling for years. It has been seven months since Biden’s inauguration, and he still has not secured a Chinese trade policy and many tariffs set by the Trump administration remain in place.
“The economic dimension of our policy remains under study and, hopefully, will end in the not too distant future,” said the senior administration official.
When asked about trade matters, the senior administration official simply replied that Xi had made no “request” about it during Thursday’s appeal.
Officials in the Biden administration have had a series of sensitive meetings with their Chinese counterparts since their first in-person meeting in March in Anchorage, Alaska. During this session, Chinese diplomats exchanged angry words in front of the press as they stood with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan.
Equally tense was Under Secretary of State Wendy Sherman’s visit to Tianjing in July.
“I don’t mean to say diplomacy on specific issues has hit a wall,” a senior official said in response to a question about the state of play. The manager described these previous interactions as “unsuccessful”.
US climate envoy John Kerry was in China last week to see if the two countries – the world’s biggest polluters – could negotiate a deal on the common climate concern. A day earlier, China’s foreign minister rhetorically linked Beijing’s potential willingness to cooperate on climate change with all of US-China relations.
The Biden administration believes that much of this buffoonery is simply for China’s national propaganda purposes. The senior administration official said Chinese officials simply read the talking points in order to play for their bosses in their interactions, and that they have no real ability to negotiate.
“They’re trying to see if we’re going to blink,” the senior administration official said.
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