Xi Says Cooperation With US ‘Only Right Choice’ Ahead of Biden Meeting Tentatively Set for Monday

With a third summit between the US and Chinese leaders expected next week, Chinese President Xi Jinping has expressed his hope that the two superpowers can find common ground on which to cooperate. His comments come amid a marked cooling of relations.

“Right now, China-US relations are at a critical historical juncture,” Xi said in a letter to the National Committee on US-China Relations. The letter was read to the New York-based non-profit at its annual gala on Tuesday by China’s ambassador to the United States, Qin Gang.

“Both countries will gain from cooperation and lose from confrontation,” Xi said. “Cooperation is the only right choice.”

“Following the principles of mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation, China stands ready to work with the United States to enhance exchanges and cooperation across the board,” the Chinese leader added.

The letter added that China aims to “jointly address regional and international issues as well as global challenges and … properly manage differences, so as to bring China-US relations back to the right track of sound and steady development.”

Coming Summit

The letter comes amid reports that Xi and US President Joe Biden will hold a remote conference next week. When their chief diplomats met in Switzerland last month, they pledged to hold a summit before the end of the year, and while neither government has confirmed reports that the meeting will be next week, Politico on Wednesday gave the most precise report yet, saying that a US official informed them it was tentatively scheduled for Monday.

White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Monday that the talks were “not about seeking specific deliverables,” but were “part of our ongoing efforts to responsibly manage the competition between our countries.”

US-Chinese relations have deteriorated markedly in the last five years, with Biden continuing the policy set by his predecessor, Donald Trump, of pursuing great power competition with Russia and China. With the socialist giant identified by Washington as the US’ chief rival for the 21st century and an aspiring successor to the US as a leading world power, the US has pursued an increasingly antagonistic agenda, accusing China of abuses of its own population, aggression on the international stage, and unfair practices in business and trade.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken (2nd R), joined by National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan (R), speaks while facing Yang Jiechi (2nd L), director of the Central Foreign Affairs Commission Office, and Wang Yi (L), China's State Councilor and Foreign Minister, at the opening session of US-China talks at the Captain Cook Hotel in Anchorage, Alaska, U.S. March 18, 2021

© REUTERS / Frederic J. Brown/Pool

A Chinese government adviser who asked to remain anonymous told the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post on Wednesday that “The two sides have engaged in finger-pointing on many fronts. They have to see how to rebuild mutual trust. The US has kept containing China and using the Taiwan issue as leverage to pressure China.”

Taiwan Tensions

Two unrelated reports on Tuesday gave scope to just how antagonistic that relationship has become, with the Pentagon and Taiwanese defense ministry separately revealing that US troops have been stationed on the autonomous island since at least 2008 and that hundreds more have traveled there for training in the last few years. The timeline closely tracks the growth of US weapons sales to Taiwan as well.

Several sitting members of Congress also paid an unexpected visit to Taiwan on Tuesday, drawing fury from Beijing, which denounced it as “provocative,” saying the US had “grossly interfered in China's internal affairs, seriously damaged China's territorial sovereignty, and threatened peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait.”

China regards Taiwan, which is ruled by the former republican government it defeated on the mainland in the civil war in 1949, as part of its sovereign territory that’s presently in rebellion. US aid to Taiwan violates the fundamental principle of US-China relations: that only one Chinese government exists, which is in Beijing.

Reframing the Situation

Jake Sullivan, the White House’s national security adviser, recently tried to reframe the US approach to China by suggesting that Biden had departed from Trump’s policy in important ways.

“The goal here is not containment, it's not a new Cold War … the object of the Biden administration is to shape the international environment so that it is more favorable to the interests and values of the United States and its allies and partners, to like-minded democracies. It is not to bring about some fundamental transformation of China itself," Sullivan told CNN on November 7.

Rather, "the goal of America's China policy is to create a circumstance in which two major powers are going to have to operate in an international system for the foreseeable future," he added.

That’s a remarkable change from what Trump’s National Security Council wrote in a then-classified document 2018, when it suggested that “strategic competition between the United States and China will persist, owing to the divergent nature and goals of our political and economic systems.”

Still, Sullivan noted the US was looking to create an international coalition capable of pressuring China into playing by the “international rules-based order” created by the United States after World War II.