Xi Jinping congratulates ‘old friend’ Joe Biden

China’s President Xi Jinping has finally sent his formal congratulations to Joe Biden, the most discussed man in Beijing.

Joe Biden delivers a thanksgiving address at the Queen Theatre in Wilmington, Delaware, on Thursday. Picture: AFP

China’s President Xi Jinping has finally sent his formal congratulations to Joe Biden, the most discussed man in Beijing.

“We hope both countries uphold the spirit of non-conflict, non-confrontation, mutual respect and win-win co-operation, focus on co-operation, manage and control conflict, to promote China-US relations towards a healthy and stable path,” Mr Xi said in a message publicised late on Wednesday by China’s official Xinhua news agency.

The note was sent weeks after other world leaders congratulated Mr Biden, as China’s leaders delicately manage their departing foe, Donald Trump.

Ordinary Beijingers have been much less cautious.

For three weeks they have queued at Yaoji Chaogan, a modest restaurant next to the Drum Tower in the capital’s historic inner north that then vice-president Biden visited in 2011.

Qian Huihui says she and her husband could not wait to post a photo of their meal. “To tell our friends we’ve been to a restaurant the American president has visited,” she tells The Australian.

People line-up outside local restaurant Yaoji Chaogan where then Vice President Joe Biden ate a meal in 2011 during a visit to Beijing. Picture: Getty Images

Even the autumn chill hasn’t stopped them lining up for what Yaoji Chaogan’s internet fanbase call the “Biden pack”, the fried noodle dish, cold vegetable side dishes and Coke the Obama-era entourage ordered when it dropped in nine years ago.

But, echoing current debates by China’s foreign policy strategists, many in the lunch crowd are uncertain about what a Biden administration will mean for relations between the world’s two most powerful states.

Ms Qian, who runs a business in Hangzhou, just south of Shanghai, with her husband and lunch companion, says she hopes a president Biden will be less confrontational than his predecessor. Her husband, Xu Jizhe, agrees that bad relations are no good for business.

Mr Biden was dubbed an “old friend” by Mr Xi back in 2013, but Mr Xu doubts that closeness will return. “Some unfriendliness is inevitable as China grows stronger,” he says, over a lunch of fried liver.

And he certainly doesn’t want China’s leadership to temper its approach.

“China has been soft too long in face of the world,” he says.

Beijing’s leading foreign policy thinkers are also resigned to ongoing friction with Washington.

A display of photos showing then Vice President Joe Biden visiting Yaoji Chaogan, famous for its pork liver soup, in 2011. Photo: Getty Images

Wang Huiyao, president of Beijing-based think tank the Centre for China and Globalisation, agrees that as China grows, so will suspicion about it in the US. “Sino-US relations have fallen to their lowest point in 40 years,” he told The Australian.

But Mr Wang — who sits on China’s 35-member state council — predicts that tensions will ease from this “unsustainable point” under Mr Biden. “First of all, he understands China better. He has met Xi Jinping eight times on various visits. They spent dozens of hours in communication,” he says.

The departure of “non-institutional politicians” like Peter Navarro and Steve Bannon (who left in 2017), and Mr Trump’s hawkish Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, should also help, Mr Wang argues.

“In addition, he wants to push forward some multilateralism diplomacy. One of the issues Biden wants to talk about is climate change, and he needs China’s support,” he says.

Shi Yinhong, a Beijing-based expert on relations with America, has expressed the uncertainty of many Chinese strategists about the post-Trump era.

The scholar at Renmin University has warned about the drawbacks of a Biden presidency.

“When it comes to issues such as Xinjiang, Tibet, Hong Kong, Taiwan, the South China Sea, China’s religious conditions and human rights conditions, it will not be too different from the Trump administration, or even worse,” he told Chinese magazine Phoenix Weekly.

But Mr Shi said the Biden presidency also offers many advantages, including greatly reducing the possibility of Sino-US military conflicts. “Biden is far less wild, vulgar and changeable than Trump,” he said.

Back in the restaurant, some in the crowd insist their lives are not going to be determined by who is in the White House – or where he has previously had lunch.

“I know Biden has come here,” says Beijinger Zhao Lin, who was enjoying a meal of boiled insides with a friend visiting from China’s northeast. “But I came here earlier than him,” she tells The Australian. “I knew this restaurant was good before he did.”