Xi, to Biden after arriving in the US: "The Earth is big enough for both countries to succeed"

The presidents of the United States, Joe Biden, and of China, Xi Jinping, began their meeting near San Francisco this Wednesday with a cordial handshake while they posed smiling in front of the cameras that sought to immortalize the moment.. Before the meeting, Xi assured his counterpart through television cameras that “planet Earth is big enough for the two countries to succeed” as powers.

The meeting, which began after 11:15 local time (8:15 p.m. Spanish peninsular time), takes place in a mansion known as “Filoli”, which served as the image for the popular television series Dinasty (Dynasty) and located in the town of Woodside, about 40 kilometers from downtown San Francisco.

Biden was waiting at the gates of the mansion for Xi, who arrived riding in a black car. They both stopped for a moment before entering the home to wave to the media, shake hands and pose. “We have not always agreed, which is not a surprise to anyone, but our meetings have always been frank, direct and useful,” said the US president at the beginning of the meeting with Xi, highlighting the fact that there is direct contact between the two powers.

This face to face on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit will be the first in a year between the two leaders, after the one they held for about three hours in November 2022 in Bali (Indonesia) during the G20 summit.

Biden attends the meeting with the aim of resuming communications between the Armed Forces of the two countries and getting China to take measures to control the departure from its territory of chemicals used to manufacture fentanyl, a powerful opioid that is charged the lives of almost 200 Americans a day.

For his part, Xi will want to extract from Biden a commitment that the US will not intervene in the January presidential elections in Taiwan and will not support an eventual declaration of independence for the island, which China claims as part of its territory and which Washington could defend. in case of armed conflict.

Neither side anticipates major agreements, but they do seek to reestablish lines of communication in different areas to prevent competition between the two powers from leading to open conflict.

Months of mistrust

The two leaders have not had any type of formal communication, not even a phone call, since the meeting in Bali. That face to face ended on a positive note and was then perceived as a new chapter in bilateral relations after the tensions during Donald Trump's mandate (2017-2021), when both nations engaged in a trade war with mutual imposition of tariffs.

However, the harmony was short-lived and relations soured again after the Biden Administration shot down an alleged Chinese “spy” balloon that flew over the United States at the beginning of the year.

After that incident, there were months of mistrust, but in June a complicated diplomatic dance began to revitalize bilateral relations with the trip to Beijing of several members of the US Government, including the visit in June of the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken. In addition, members of the Chinese Government traveled to the US in recent months, such as Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who met with Biden at the end of October.