Biden-Xi summit is a thaw of mutual convenience

Joe Biden’s advice to Anthony Albanese on China to “trust but verify” is an important caveat for the smiles and good wishes that surrounded the US President’s own meeting with Xi Jinping on Wednesday. Like Mr Albanese’s trip to Beijing earlier this month, the atmospherics surrounding the Biden-Xi summit at a wooded Californian country estate appeared promising. Addressing the Chinese ruler, Mr Biden said it was “paramount that you and I understand each other clearly, leader to leader, with no misconceptions or miscommunication”. Mr Xi was similarly forthright, rightly describing China-US ties as “the most important bilateral relationship in the world”. He emphasised that “turning (our) backs on each other is not an option”. “Planet Earth is big enough for (our) two countries to succeed, and one country’s success is an opportunity for the other,” he added. “Confrontation (would have) unbearable consequences for both sides.”

But all the carefully choreographed, mutual bonhomie did not last long. The speed with which Beijing rushed to issue a readout of its version of the discussion, highlighting Mr Xi’s blunt warning that Taiwan’s reunification with China is “unstoppable” and the US must “stop arming” Taipei, leaves no doubt that all the same dark clouds overhang the relationship.

Optimistically, in a tweet after the meeting, Mr Biden claimed he and Mr Xi had “made real progress”. What he had in mind was doubtless their agreement to resume high-level military-to-military contact suspended by Beijing when former US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made her controversial visit to Taiwan in August last year. Such contact between the world’s two most powerful nations, as Mr Albanese – who is also in California for the APEC summit – said, is important. It could help regional stability and avoid “real conflict”.

Mr Xi and Mr Biden also agreed to work together to choke off supplies to Mexican drug cartels of Chinese chemicals needed to make the deadly opioid fentanyl, a vital issue for the US – and for Mr Biden’s hopes for re-election. Realistically, however, both agreements only return those aspects of the bilateral relationship to where they were before recent bouts of serious friction, including February’s shooting down by the US of a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon, which sent ties plummeting.

Certainly, all the signs on Wednesday – as with Mr Albanese’s Beijing visit – were of a more malleable Mr Xi. There should be no surprise about that given the parlous state of the Chinese economy and the Chinese leader’s need for foreign investment and export markets to offset the effects of the disastrous Chinese real estate crash and excessive debt that is slowing its economy. He desperately needs a respite from further US economic sanctions, including relief from those the US has placed on the sale of technology to Chinese firms.

For now, the “wolf warrior” diplomats are being held back on a tight leash. It is important, however, not to read too much into the change of tone and the comparatively positive atmosphere that seemed to pervade the California summit. The real question after the summit, as The Wall Street Journal noted, is whether what it described as this “new era of bilateral good feelings” means much, and whether it signals that the Chinese ruler is giving up his ambition to up-end the US-led international order. As the trenchant Chinese statement warning Mr Biden over continuing to arm Taiwan showed, no one should be fooled into believing the Chinese Communist dragon has changed its stripes.

Signs of a real, meaningful thaw in US-China relations would have been seen if, at the summit, there had been some indication Beijing was going to pull back from its relentless military aggression in the Asia-Pacific region, including the South China Sea, where it is threatening Taiwan daily.

It is being no less outrageously belligerent in challenging the sovereignty of a host of countries, including The Philippines. Instead of any signs of a thaw, China is ramping up its aggression with naval manoeuvres in the Taiwan Strait that are, ominously, the sort that normally presage an invasion or military blockade. It is no less outrageously stopping Manila from resupplying islands that are incontrovertibly part of its sovereignty.

At the same time, Mr Xi is helping Vladimir Putin with his war against the West in Ukraine and is continuing to do much to help Iran overcome the effects of sanctions, thereby enabling the terrorist-supporting ayatollahs in Tehran to do more to support their proxies, Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis, seeking to annihilate Israel. Six major Chinese banks – including the world’s largest bank, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China – are heavily involved in helping Iran thwart sanctions, and thereby assisting Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis.

As Mr Biden told a news conference after the summit, Mr Xi is a “dictator” and his warning about Taiwan should leave neither the US, nor Washington’s allies such as Australia, in any doubt that while the atmospherics at the summit might have appeared different, Beijing has lost none of its determination to dominate the world at the expense of the Western democracies.