In Bali, Biden and Xi Probe For Guardrails by David Ignatius

Political Crossfire In Bali, Biden and Xi Probe For Guardrails on the Perilous Road Ahead

By David Ignatius

Monday’s summit in Indonesia between Presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping didn’t reset the fundamentals of the U.S.-China relationship, which has been in something of a free fall for several years. But at least it set a “floor,” to use the word favored by the Biden administration, on which the two parties can stand and compete.

This isn’t a reset back to an old norm – that’s gone, for better or worse – but rather a decision to explore rules of engagement for the intense competition that lies ahead.

China’s official readout of the summit expressed hope that the two countries will return “to the track of healthy and stable development,” characterized by the “win-win cooperation” that Beijing invokes in nearly every communique. That rosy scenario doesn’t match reality, but at least the Chinese endorsed “cooperation to address important global issues such as climate change and food security.” That was the baseline U.S. agenda for the meeting.

This account of the lengthy meeting, which lasted more than three hours, is drawn from American and Chinese public summaries of the conversation, and from officials with firsthand knowledge of what was said. The headline from the meeting is that the two leading superpowers share an interest in containing the war in Ukraine and in cooperating, where possible, on issues of common concern. Taiwan remains a dangerous bomb, although probably one with a long fuse.

Xi and Biden both arrived in Bali on the cresting waves of recent political success. Xi’s rule was validated by a Communist Party congress last month that gave him unprecedented power. He was a commanding figure in the meeting room, dominating the Politburo members who accompanied him almost as if they were low-level staffers. He described himself to Biden as deeply popular, and in a dictatorship, such claims can’t be tested.

Biden arrived at the summit fresh off the unexpected Democratic success in the midterm elections. Biden had been downcast before the midterms, according to friends. But he was buoyed by Democrats’ ability to fend off Republican attacks – a validation of his core goal of quashing former president Donald Trump’s extremism. To China’s claim that American politics is hopelessly paralyzed by division, Biden could say in Bali: Not so.

Xi conveyed an almost religious sense of the destiny of the Communist Party, officials said. His opening anecdote was a description of traveling with the six members of the Politburo’s standing committee in late October, after the party congress, to the caves in Yan’an, in central China, which was the launching point for its revolution. Xi and his comrades wore dark work suits there, like their forebears. Xi was obviously channeling Mao, at Yan’an and with Biden.

Xi’s message to Biden was that the Communist Party had endured hardships and would prevail if challenged. He recalled how the Soviet Union tried to cut China off from advanced technology in the 1960s but that China went on to detonate a hydrogen bomb in 1967. The moral of the story, for Xi, is that the United States might try a similar tech squeeze now but China will make its way on its own.

Xi denied Biden’s claim that China was trying to replace the United States as the world’s leader, the Chinese readout suggested. But Biden is said to have pushed back that America has hard evidence of China’s military ambitions.

On Taiwan, Xi’s theme was that if the crisis isn’t managed carefully, it will lead to conflict. He expressed concern about any Taiwanese move for independence and stressed China’s “red lines” concerning the island, which Beijing views as part of China. Biden reassured Xi that “the United States opposes any unilateral changes to the status quo by either side” and wants “the maintenance of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait,” according to the American summary.

Both countries’ positions on Taiwan appeared to repeat existing policy. And U.S. officials came away feeling that Xi didn’t want a full-blown Taiwan crisis now, preferring breathing space that could allow China to deal with a sharply slowing economy and the continuing threat of the COVID-19 pandemic.

A useful point of agreement between the two superpowers was that Russia’s threats to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine pose a serious danger to global peace. Xi’s private words were said to be similar to what Premier Li Keqiang said publicly the previous day at the ASEAN summit in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. According to the Chinese news agency Xinhua, Li stressed that China supports “the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries” and opposes “the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons.”

The official U.S. summary put it this way: “President Biden and President Xi reiterated their agreement that a nuclear war should never be fought and can never be won and underscored their opposition to the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine.”

U.S. officials say their goal in the increasingly contentious relationship is to create “guardrails” and “rules of the road.” The Bali summit helped that process. But the fact remains that the U.S.-China relationship is like two cars careening down a narrow road, at ever higher speed. At least the drivers are talking.