ISTANBUL
The path to a potential meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and his US counterpart Joe Biden “will not be an easy one,” Foreign Minister Wang Yi noted as he wrapped up his three-day official trip to the US, which was the first in several years by any top Chinese diplomat.
The US is hosting the summit of Asia-Pacific Economic Partnership (APEC) next month, where Xi could have direct talks with Biden.
Washington needs to “remove disruption, overcome obstacles, build consensus and accumulate outcomes,” Wang told members of the US strategic community, who hold a significant say in Washington’s foreign policy.
Political observers in China agree with Wang’s assessment about the world’s most consequential bilateral relationship, which has stumbled in the past five years.
They believe Washington is wary of a “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” which is part of Beijing’s “strategic intention.”
The two sides have been holding high-level talks since early this year which, according to Wang Zaibang, a senior fellow at the Taihe Institute, “shows that Sino-US relations have stabilized.”
Xi and Biden held their first summit-level meeting last year in Indonesia.
However, the discovery in February of a Chinese “surveillance” balloon over the US led to partial derailment of continuing what Beijing calls the “Bali consensus” reached between the two leaders.
‘China’s strategic intentions’
Wang, the Beijing-based expert, said Washington needs to “eliminate misunderstandings” about China’s strategic intentions and adhere to the one-China principle on the Taiwan issue.
Strategic intentions, he explained, aim to “effectively safeguard China's national sovereignty, security and territorial integrity, free the people of China from poverty and backwardness.”
It is to “make the country rich and strong, and stop being bullied,” he added.
Hongda Fan, a professor at the Shanghai International Studies University, believes Washington and Beijing “should view each other more appropriately.”
“The two countries must work together to face the changing world, instead of trying to undermine each other,” he said.
He told Anadolu that Washington’s “attitude toward China has worsened since President (Barack) Obama’s administration.”
“During the (Donald) Trump administration, the US significantly increased its containment of China, and China subsequently took countermeasures, causing the relationship between the two countries to extremely deteriorate,” he said.
Wang agrees with the assessment on where bilateral ties derailed.
However, he said: the problems “actually existed before Trump came to power, but some were latent and some were not intensified or surfaced.”
These issues have “gradually intensified,” he said.
“When the Biden administration came to power, partly spurred by the Russia-Ukraine war, the US intensified its efforts to encourage separatist forces for Taiwan independence on the Taiwan issue, leading to frequent crises in the Taiwan Strait,” he explained.
According to Wang, Washington’s moves under the Biden administration “accelerated the pace of the Asian NATO effort to contain China in East Asia.”
He added that such moves “provoked quarrels and troubles in the East China Sea, the South China Sea, and even the Yellow Sea.”
While NATO has not said anything about expanding to Asia-Pacific, the world’s biggest military alliance has upgraded interactions with US allies including Japan, Australia and South Korea.
Tokyo could also host the first NATO office in the region.
“All of this seriously undermined the stability of East Asia,” said Wang.
‘Changing international order’
The main existing issue between China and the US, said Hongda, is “how the two most powerful countries in the world view each other and how they treat the changing international order.”
“The old international order is obviously unable to cope with global challenges,” he said.
In Wang’s view, Washington “has wrong strategic positioning towards China.”
“The US regards the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation as a threat to the US, and China as an enemy,” he said.
“It obstructs China’s reunification and development in every possible way, threatens China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and comprehensively contain China’s development,” he said, explaining the issues that Beijing sees are the primary hurdles in better ties with the US.
‘US has been more proactive’
In the current round of efforts to improve relations, “the US has been more proactive,” said Wang.
“The repeated visits of senior executives to China have sent a very strong signal that the US hopes that Sino-US relations will ease and stabilize,” he added.
Since the US is the APEC chair this year, it expects China’s top leaders to attend the meeting, he said.
The expert, however, is not too optimistic.
“It can be expected that before and after the APEC meeting in San Francisco in November, the US will show its goodwill to the greatest extent, and give China a relatively satisfactory position on these conflicting issues,” he said.
However, he pointed out that 2024 “is an election year in the United States, and the China issue is likely to become the subject of speculation by candidates of both parties and the media.”
For this reason, China-US relations “may still suffer impacts,” he added.
For Einar Tangen, a renowned commentator in Beijing, “a broad-based detente is not possible now.”
In his view, Beijing “will have to settle” for limited progress in some aspects like “laying the groundwork for future bilateral relations and global cooperation.”
