The summit between Biden and Xi is the beginning of the battle
US President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping have agreed to resume communication between their countries' armed forces during their talks on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in San Francisco. This gave rise to hope that the US and China are ready to contain their tensions. But with just a single sentence, Biden managed to thwart the appearance of a thaw just a few hours later. The US president left the stage at the end of his press conference when a journalist asked him whether he still wanted to call Xi Jinping a "dictator". Biden immediately responded: "He's a dictator in the sense that he's leading a communist country that's based on a form of government that's very different from ours." At that moment, Blinken looked irritated and shocked.
The fact that high-ranking military officials from the People's Republic and the United States are communicating again is already a step towards de-escalation. But on the fundamentals, Xi Jinping and Joe Biden remain at odds. China's refusal to make a phone call between defense ministers during the balloon affair at the beginning of the year testified to the growing geopolitical rivalry between China and the United States to a new extent.
The current "stabilization" of the bilateral relationship that Xi and Biden sought remains fragile. Relations remain unpredictable, as the positions on the central points of contention are diametrically opposed.
Biden has repeatedly made it clear that the US is in systemic competition with the People's Republic. Xi, on the other hand, is bothered by this view of relations and always advocates a multipolar world order: Planet Earth is large enough for both countries to succeed and the success of one can also be an opportunity for the other. China and America are different in terms of their history, culture and social system, but as long as they respect each other, they can overcome their differences, Xi said during his meeting with Biden.
Biden wants to continue the foreign policy of creating and expanding US alliances in the Pacific. Xi sees this primarily as attempts to encircle China militarily. In all this, Taiwan remains the central point of contention, with the US currently in the process of arming the breakaway island against the People's Republic to the teeth. A senior Biden administration official said after the top-level meeting that Xi had made it clear that the Taiwan issue was potentially the most dangerous issue in Sino-U.S. relations. And Xi apparently made no secret of the fact that he would be prepared to resolve the Taiwan question by force if necessary. The dominant superpower, the United States, undoubtedly sees itself threatened by the economic and technological progress of the emerging great power China and has become aware of the risks involved when a new great power with a completely different view of the world gains influence worldwide.
Talks are good, but the rivalry will certainly not stop after this.