According to Voice of America, quoting anonymous sources, it is reported that the United States and China are planning to arrange a call between their top leaders in the coming days.
Some scholars have expressed that the upcoming US-China summit is unlikely to restore bilateral relations. Currently, the governments of the United States and China have been engaging in a pattern of mixed messages, where even high-level bilateral talks are largely seen as a performance for the domestic audiences of both sides.
The last call between U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping took place in April this year. Their last in-person meeting was back in November 2023 in Woodside, California.
Following a meeting in New York between U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi last Friday, both sides emphasized the importance of keeping channels of communication between their leaders open.
Blinken stated, “We also both agree that leader-to-leader communication is important. Therefore, I fully expect that we will see calls between the two sides in the coming weeks and months.”
Since assuming the presidency, Biden has met with Xi Jinping twice and had six phone calls or video conferences. However, these dialogues have not yielded lasting positive outcomes. Due to previous unsuccessful engagements and larger structural issues between the U.S. and China, a breakthrough through negotiations seems unlikely.
Denny Roy, a senior researcher at the East-West Center, a U.S. think tank specializing in Asia-Pacific strategic security issues, analyzed that the primary objective of US-China leadership meetings is to showcase their ability to manage the bilateral relationship and to highlight each other’s misconduct, occasionally reaching mild cooperative agreements. Nonetheless, these agreements are fragile and easily broken.
During a meeting in Beijing with Jake Sullivan, U.S. National Security Advisor, Xi Jinping raised a fundamental question: Are China and the U.S. competitors or partners?
Roy noted that Xi Jinping seems to know the answer to this question but refuses to accept it. As for Biden, as President of the United States, he cannot comply with China’s demands. The Biden administration has reiterated that its approach towards China is strategic, competitive, and involves cooperation in certain areas.
Behaviors exhibited by the Chinese Communist Party, such as nuclear weapons development, economic coercion, cyber theft, interference in other countries’ internal affairs, territorial expansion in the South China Sea, and threats to use force against Taiwan, have aroused concerns among Americans regarding China.
Roy stated that in some cases, persuading one government to change its behavior successfully to avert mutually undesirable outcomes is necessary. However, in the case of U.S.-China relations, two persistent issues remain. Firstly, key policies of both countries, like U.S. policy towards Taiwan, have reached a point where significant revisions to please negotiation partners seem unlikely. Secondly, even if one side makes concessions, their impacts are temporary.
For instance, the signing of the Code for Unplanned Encounters at Sea between the U.S. and China during the Obama administration in 2014 seemed successful at first, but currently, unprofessional actions by Chinese ships and aircraft towards American and other foreign sailors have become commonplace.
Roy pointed out that fundamental strategic disagreements between the U.S. and China have irreversibly divided Beijing and Washington. These include the legitimacy of the U.S. and its allies and their influence in Asia, Taiwan’s right to self-determination, China’s claimed sovereignty over the South China Sea, Beijing’s support for Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, and how to address North Korea’s nuclear weapons.
“Xi Jinping is well aware that the United States will have a new president in a few months, but even after the new president takes office, it should not be expected that bilateral relations will be repaired through summits or phone calls,” Roy concluded.