Like an athlete long absent from competition due to the “zero Covid” policy, Xi Jinping has decided to make his international comeback in two stages this fall. First a warm-up in Uzbekistan, in mid-September, where it was a question of finding a group of friendly countries, united within the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). It was an opportunity to meet the Russian President, Vladimir Putin. Then, this week, the real competition, the world arena, the G20 in Bali (Indonesia), where, his Russian partner absent, the Chinese president confronts the West, more than eight months after the outbreak of the Russian invasion in Ukraine.
As a curtain raiser, the meeting with Joe Biden, Monday, November 14, kept its promises. The two leaders, who had spoken five times remotely since 2020, shook hands, without a mask. Their interview lasted more than three hours.
Mr. Biden and Xi initially chose to assault each other. The American president, boosted by mid-term elections from which he emerged partly victorious, is not, unlike his predecessor Donald Trump, the type to humiliate his opponents. “It’s a real pleasure to see you again”, he launched at the start of their meeting, in the hotel where his counterpart resides. For his part, Xi Jinping, now guaranteed to stay in power as long as he wishes, is in no hurry. His goal is to continue the modernization of his country so that it becomes the world’s leading power in 2049. “We need to find the right path for this bilateral relationship to move forward and elevate”he assured.
The Chinese side refrained, this time, from criticizing “cold war mentality” American leaders or their “hegemony”. Joe Biden said for his part that he did not want to “new cold war”. Asked at the press conference just after the meeting about his impressions of the Chinese leader, he said he had “found as he always was, direct and frank”. “I am convinced that he understood what I was saying and I understood what he was saying,” he added. Basically, however, no progress has been made. The United States and China did not issue a joint statement after the meeting and no one expected it to be otherwise.
Taiwan, “at the heart of China’s vital interests”
The Chinese press release released very quickly after the interview takes great care to specify that Xi Jinping began by explaining to Joe Biden the essential elements of the XXe Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Congress which ended on October 22: “Great continuity and high stability. » So there is no change to be expected from Beijing. Xi Jinping hears “to promote the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation at all levels”. Including the military. Moreover, if the CCP does not claim to dominate the world, it does not intend to make any concessions, in particular on the essential question in its eyes: Taiwan, “at the heart of China’s vital interests”.
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