Supreme leader Xi Jinping and Joe Biden set date for first summit

Beijing has sent positive to Washington in the lead up to the virtual meeting expected to be held on Monday.

The seven members of the standing committee of the politburo vote on Thursday to elevate Xi Jinping, centre, to paramount leader. Picture: Xinhua

US President Joe Biden is expected to hold a highly anticipated summit with Xi Jinping on Monday, days after the Chinese leader declared himself essential to the ruling Communist Party’s “great struggle”.

Beijing has sent positive signals to Washington in the lead-up to the virtual meeting, which comes after a tense first year in Mr Biden’s presidency.

“Some people say that the China-US relationship cannot go back to the past,” said Mr Xi’s American envoy, Qin Gang, at a gala dinner this week in New York. “We reject this view,” Mr Qin said at the Plaza Hotel to a crowd, which included Beijing’s long-time favourite messenger, former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger.

“We look forward to working with the American government and visionary people, in the spirit of the phone call between our presidents, to strengthen dialogue, manage differences, focus on co-operation, and make unremitting efforts to take China-US relations back to the right track,” he said.

A world away from that black-tie Manhattan gala, Mr Xi was overseeing a four-day meeting of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party in the fortress-like Jingxi Hotel.

The meeting demonstrated Mr Xi’s supreme power over the ruling party of the world’s most populous country.

On Thursday, 347 of Mr Xi’s comrades raised their hands to pass a “historical resolution” that praised their supreme leader’s “meticulous assessment”, “deep reflection” and “original new ideas, thoughts, and strategies”.

No shortage of reading material this week from Xi Jinping at the Museum of the Communist Party of China in Beijing. Picture: AFP

“The party has proved to be a great, glorious, and correct party,” they agreed while repeatedly affirming the importance of Mr Xi’s “core” leadership, according to an official communique. Members of the party’s feared discipline and inspection committee watched over the political meeting, which Mr Xi personally chaired.

The meeting’s “historical resolution” was a part of the highly choreographed lead-up to Mr Xi’s precedent-setting third five-year-term, which will be made official at the end of next year.

“There’s no room for doubt,” said Geremie Barme, a historian of China and fellow with the Centre on US-China Relations at the Asia Society in New York.

It all flows from Mr Xi’s audacious repeal of China’s two-term limit on the presidency at a political meeting in 2018.

“That’s when it was all decided. The Communist Party has a habit of announcing its victories long after they have been achieved,” Mr Barme told The Weekend Australian.

Next week’s scheduled meeting will be the first between Mr Xi and Mr Biden since the US President took office, although the two have spoken twice on the phone this year and met a few times when they were vice-presidents.

Mr Biden is the third US president Mr Xi has dealt with since he took over the leadership of China’s ruling party in 2012. Over those nine years, Mr Xi’s increasingly assertive leadership style has seen tensions in the relationship spread from trade, to cyber attacks, to China’s territorial expansion in the South and East China Seas, and military threats towards Taiwan.

At the same time, Mr Xi has warned the US about forming “small circles”, such as the AUKUS and the Quad, to push back against his China.

“The Asia-Pacific region cannot and should not relapse into the confrontation and division of the Cold War era,” he told an APEC summit hosted by New Zealand this week.

Days earlier, Mr Xi had sent a letter to Mr Biden that offered “mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and win-win co-operation”.

In their heavily guarded Beijing hotel, Mr Xi and his comrades this week saluted their handling of international relations.

“China’s major-country diplomacy has advanced on all fronts,” they said, according to the official communique. But Mr Xi and his party agreed much struggle lay ahead. “We must be able to overcome all difficulties and withstand all pressures, and steer the great ship of socialism with Chinese characteristics to cleave the waves and sail ahead with unstoppable momentum.”