U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping met Saturday in Peru for what is likely to be the last time on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, or APEC, summit. While the meeting resulted in few substantive developments, the two sides did agree to maintain human—rather than AI—control over the use of nuclear weapons. (New York Times)
Our Take
Biden and Xi’s talks Saturday were simultaneously important and unimportant. On the one hand, the meeting marks the last substantive talks between the two leaders before Biden leaves office in January, making it a useful marker for judging how the U.S.-China relationship has evolved during and as a result of the four years of his presidency.
Biden took office in 2021 with the intention of trying to improve U.S.-China relations, or at least the tone and regularity of bilateral engagement, after years of increased tensions and ultimately communication breakdown during Trump’s first term. But a few obstacles prevented Biden from seeing that through. For one, Beijing’s initial responses to the Biden administration’s outreach were confrontational and defiant, in part because of lingering tensions from the preceding four years, but also because the COVID-19 pandemic appeared—at least to China—to signal a turning point in the relative global power of the two sides. China’s position on the war in Ukraine and the spy balloon incident last year both presented obstacles to deeper engagement as well.