US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping convened on November 15th, 2023 during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) conference in San Francisco. The Biden-Xi summit marks a pivotal moment amid the recent shifts in United States-China relations, ranging from the Chinese spy balloon incident in February and the Biden administration’s high-profile visits to China over the summer.
Professor Dennis Wilder (MSFS’79), a former Special Assistant to the President and the Senior Director for East Asian Affairs at the White House’s National Security Council, joins GJIA to discuss the key takeaways of the Biden-Xi summit and the state of US-China relations.
https://gjia.georgetown.edu/2023/12/22/a-floor-for-us-china-relations-in-2024-insights-on-the-biden-xi-summit-from-professor-dennis-wilder/
GJIA: Could you share with us some of the key takeaways from the Biden-Xi summit?
DW: You know, the Chinese love to say that we need “win-win cooperation.” In this case, there was “win-win” on both sides. Let me explain.
For the Biden administration, one of the most important things that they needed to get out of this summit was an agreement on fentanyl and fentanyl precursors. If you’ve been following this story, it is the largest killer of eighteen to forty-five-year-old Americans today. We have to find a way to stop these chemicals from coming into the United States, and companies in China are directly responsible for getting those precursors to Mexico, where gangs make them into pills. We hadn’t been able to get the Chinese to shut this down because of how bad relations had been. But at the summit, Xi Jinping agreed to shut it down. And we are already seeing steps taken to do so by the Chinese. Secondly, the United States wanted to restart its military-to-military relationship with the Chinese, which had been shut down because of Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan last August. Eight different military-to-military communications had been shut down, but the Chinese agreed to restore two, and they’re important ones. It’s not a complete restoration yet, but it is a step in the right direction. Hopefully, such communications with China will help the United States avoid incidents at sea or incidents in the air. As you may know, there have been some unsafe and worrying activities by Chinese aircraft and ships.
On the Chinese side, what Xi Jinping wanted most out of this visit was respect. He wanted a great visit to San Francisco and a first-class welcome by the American people. If you looked at the atmospherics, he got a lot of what he wanted. First of all, the meeting was at a grand estate where scenes from the popular nighttime television soap opera Dynasty had been filmed. President Biden did several things that were very personal. Biden remembered that Madam Peng’s birthday was the week of the visit, the same day as Biden’s, and he said something to Xi about it. He also showed him on his phone a picture of Xi Jinping, when he visited as a young man, standing near the Golden Gate Bridge. Even as they were leaving, [Biden] went out and complimented Xi Jinping on his armored car saying, “Wow, what a vehicle you’ve got.” Biden then pointed out that what we call “The Beast”, the American presidential vehicle, was not as sleek as the Chinese vehicle. The second part that was important to Xi Jinping was a big dinner in San Francisco with all of the kingpins of American industry, including Elon Musk, Tim Cook, Steve Schwarzman, and others. To sit at the head table, you had to pay $40,000 a person. If you just wanted to sit at one of the regular tables, you had to pay $2,000. Xi Jinping received several standing ovations during his speech. Chinese Central TV portrayed Xi Jinping as taking San Francisco by storm. You almost didn’t know that there was an APEC summit or any foreign leader there other than Xi Jinping. It was overwhelmingly a Xi Jinping show. It was a show of the Americans paying him the respect the Chinese leader believed was due. Overall, I think both sides gained a lot.
GJIA: How do you perceive the interplay between strategic competition and collaboration in US-China relations evolving in the near future?
DW: One of my friends said, “Before this summit, we had competition; after this summit, hopefully, we have competition with communication.” You have to understand why this summit was so important. Looking ahead to 2024, President Biden will be campaigning for the presidential election the whole year. There is almost no chance that he would go to Asia during the year, as no president has done so in an election year. He’s not going to do a return trip to Beijing; he’s not going to the ASEAN events; he’s not going to go to any of the other summitry that will take place in Asia. Similarly, Xi Jinping is not going to be invited to Washington because the issue of Chinese relations is so fraught in American politics that it would be political suicide for Biden to make that invitation. 2024 poses a challenge with two major events that could disrupt US-China relations, and they are the bookends. On the front end, you have the Taiwan election in January. On the back end, you have the American election in November.
The Taiwan election, depending on who wins, could be very disruptive to relations across the strait and therefore to US-China relations. In the past, we’ve had Taiwan presidents like Ma Ying-jeou who were very accommodating to China, and things ran relatively well. Then, we had Chen Shui-bian, who made very inflammatory statements that disrupted cross-strait relations and consequently US-China relations.
Similarly, with US elections, you’ve already seen the Republicans hitting very hard. They have bemoaned “zombie engagement” with the Chinese, in which the United States has been sending several cabinet officials to China for little in return. We’re going to get more heated rhetoric on China during the year; there’s no question about it. Obviously, the Chinese aren’t going to like that. They’re pretty thin-skinned about criticism, so the American election will likely disrupt relations with the United States. I see this meeting as a firewall against 2024. The significance lies less in the agreements made than in the effort to put a floor under the relationship just through 2024.
GJIA: In what ways could the re-opening of some military-to-military dialogue between the United States and China influence both regional and global security?
DW: Okay, not to get too technical, because when you get into these military talks, they get very complicated, but let me explain. The two dialogues that were reopened were at working levels. One of them is called the Military Maritime Consultative Agreement (MMCA). It’s a maritime agreement, where Navy-to-Navy operators get together on the Chinese and American sides to discuss how to avoid incidents in the air and in the South China Sea, East China Sea, and so forth. The MMCA is not meant to be strategic but rather a tactical process to ensure the safety of ships and planes operating in close proximity. The other restored dialogue is the Defense Policy Coordination Talks (DPT). Again, these are discussions at a lower bureaucratic level and not at a senior strategic level. The third thing that was put back in place is the hotline between the US commander in the Indo-Pacific and China’s Eastern Theater Command (who is in charge of Taiwan). This hotline ensures that if an incident in Taiwan occurs, the US Indo-Pacific commander can talk to his counterpart in charge of that situation. I think that once the Chinese have picked a new defense minister, they will open that channel with Secretary Lloyd Austin. This is all important, but what hasn’t been restored are strategic discussions between the US military and China. Senior US officials at the Office of the Secretary of Defense, for example, used to have dialogues with their Chinese counterparts. Those talks have been suspended since Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in August 2022. So far, the Chinese haven’t indicated that they’re willing to reopen those dialogues.
GJIA: In October, the United States accused China of conducting a centralized and concerted campaign of harassment against US and allied aircrafts. How concerned are you about the possibility of an escalation in tensions? Do you believe the recent Biden-Xi meeting has reduced these concerns?
DW: It was very disturbing to read the Department of Defense (DoD) report. Previously, some of us weren’t sure whether these pilots were simply hot-dogging on their own or they had instructions. The DoD report is now saying that this is a Chinese national policy and that Chinese pilots have been instructed to make unsafe flights. Well, that is a little scary. We’re hoping to see, in the wake of the meeting, that there are new orders sent out to these pilots to not conduct such unsafe flights. A troubling event occurred recently when an Australian navy ship stopped in international waters to clear some fishing nets from its rudders and propellers. The Australians had sent divers into the water to cut the net away before a Chinese navy vessel came up close. Though the vessel was warned away because of the divers, it came close and used its massive sonar system on the boat. The problem with that is when you send a sonar signal out like that and there are divers in the water, it can harm their hearing. So, the Australians immediately had to pull those divers out of the water. If such incidents continue, I’m afraid that the United States will need to have a very real discussion with the Chinese about why they think this is appropriate behavior because it doesn’t follow any of the international norms that have long been established.
GJIA: During the opening remarks of the Biden-Xi summit, President Xi stated that “Earth is big enough for the United States and China to succeed.” How do you interpret this statement in the context of the current global challenges?
DW: I was very interested in that statement, perhaps in a way you might not think. In the past, I remember Xi Jinping would say that the “Pacific” is big enough for both of us. But when he says, “The globe is big enough,” it suggests to me that he sees China as a global superpower and that he is no longer thinking regionally. We’ve seen China try to position itself as a leader in the global South, very much international.
I think Xi Jinping is trying to say that we don’t need to worry about competing with each other and that we can find cooperation. The Chinese are very disturbed that the United States uses the term competition to describe their relationship. Because in China’s view—which I think is a very different view from the view Americans have—competition means somebody wins and somebody loses. Somebody gets the medal, and somebody doesn’t. Americans think of competition in a different way. Americans believe that when they compete in school and other places, all of us become better. These are two very different views of the world. When Xi says we can share the world, it means, “Hey, we don’t need to be competitors. We can cooperate.”
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This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
Interview conducted by Andy Xu Sofia.
Dennis Wilder is a Professor and Senior Fellow for the Initiative for US-China Dialogue on Global Issues at Georgetown University, where he previously served as the managing director. Prior to this, he served as the Deputy Assistant Director for East Asia and the Pacific for the Central Intelligence Agency from 2015 to 2016. He also was the former Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for East Asian Affairs at the White House’s National Security Council from 2005 to 2009.
Image Credit: Ethnic Media Services
https://gjia.georgetown.edu/2023/12/22/a-floor-for-us-china-relations-in-2024-insights-on-the-biden-xi-summit-from-professor-dennis-wilder/
2024 Walsh School of Foreign Service
Georgetown University
