Comment Monday’s summit in Indonesia between Presidents Biden and Xi Jinping did not restore the fundamentals of the US-China relationship, which has been in freefall for several years. But at least it set a “floor,” to use the word favored by the Biden administration, on which the two parties can stand and compete. This isn’t a throwback to an old rule – which is gone, for better or worse – but rather a decision to explore the rules of engagement for the intense competition ahead. China’s official readout of the summit expressed hope that the two countries will return to “the path of healthy and stable development,” characterized by the “win-win cooperation” that Beijing invokes in almost every communique. This rosy scenario doesn’t match reality, but at least the Chinese have approved “cooperation to address major global issues such as climate change and food security.” This was the main US agenda for the meeting. This account of the lengthy meeting, which lasted more than three hours, comes from US and Chinese public summaries of the conversation and from officials with firsthand knowledge of what was said. The title of the meeting is that the two leading superpowers share an interest in limiting the war in Ukraine and cooperating, where possible, on matters of common interest. Taiwan remains a dangerous bomb, albeit possibly one with a long fuse. Follow David Ignatius’ viewsFollow Add Xi and Biden both arrived in Bali riding waves of recent political success. Xi’s rule was endorsed by a Communist Party congress last month that gave him unprecedented power. He was an imposing figure in the boardroom, dominating the members of the Politburo who accompanied him almost as if they were low-level officials. He described himself to Biden as deeply popular, and in a dictatorship, such claims cannot be tested. Biden reached the summit after the Democrats’ surprise success in the midterm elections. Biden had become disillusioned before the midterm elections, according to friends. But he was encouraged by Democrats’ ability to fend off Republican attacks — a validation of his main goal of cracking down on former President Donald Trump’s extremism. To China’s claim that American policy is hopelessly paralyzed by division, Biden could say in Bali: Not so. Xi conveyed an almost religious sense of the fate of the Communist Party, officials said. His opening anecdote was a description of the trip with the six members of the Politburo Standing Committee in late October, after the party congress, to the caves in Yan’an, central China, which was the starting point for his revolution. Xi and his companions there wore dark work suits, like their ancestors. Xi was apparently channeling Mao, in Yan’an and with Biden. Xi’s message to Biden was that the Communist Party had endured hardships and would prevail if challenged. He recalled how the Soviet Union tried to cut China off from advanced technology in the 1960s, but that China went on to detonate a hydrogen bomb in 1967. The moral of the story, for Xi, is that the United States might try a similar technology is pushing now, but China will pave its own way. Xi denied Biden’s claim that China was trying to replace the United States as world leader, the Chinese reading suggested. But Biden is said to have pushed back that America has hard evidence of China’s military ambitions. In Taiwan, Xi’s point was that if the crisis is not handled carefully, it will lead to conflict. He expressed concern over any move by Taiwan for independence and highlighted China’s “red lines” on the island, which Beijing considers part of China. Biden assured Xi that “the United States opposes any unilateral changes to the status quo by any side” and wants “the maintenance of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait,” according to the American summary. Both countries’ positions on Taiwan appeared to reiterate existing policy. And US officials came away feeling that Xi did not want a full-blown crisis in Taiwan now, preferring a breather that could allow China to deal with a sharp economic slowdown and the ongoing threat of the Covid-19 pandemic. A useful point of agreement between the two superpowers was that Russia’s threats to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine pose a serious threat to world peace. Xi’s private words are said to be similar to what Premier Li Keqiang said publicly the day before at the ASEAN summit in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. According to China’s Xinhua news agency, Li stressed that China supports “the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries” and opposes the “use or threat of use of nuclear weapons.” The official US summary put it this way: “President Biden and President Xi reiterated their agreement that a nuclear war must never be fought and can never be won and underlined their opposition to the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine”. US officials say their aim in the increasingly contentious relationship is to create “guardrails” and “rules of the road”. The Bali summit helped this process. But the fact remains that the US-China relationship is like two cars driving down a narrow road, at ever-increasing speed. At least the drivers are talking.
