President Joe Biden will meet for a final time this week with Chinese President Xi Jinping as he prepares to hand over power — and the reins of the world’s most consequential bilateral relationship — to President-elect Donald Trump in January.
The meeting, set for Saturday on the sidelines of a summit of Pacific leaders in Peru, serves as a bookend to the president’s high stakes attempts to position the US against an increasingly assertive Beijing. It will be the third sit-down between the two leaders since Biden took office.
Unlike their previous meetings, the Lima talks won’t result in a long list of takeaways or deliverables. Instead, senior US officials described the meeting as a moment for reflection between two men whose relationship began more than a decade ago on a lengthy trip through China.
For all of the reminiscing Biden and Xi may do, however, their final encounter will be shadowed by the results of last week’s election. Trump enters office having promised a hard line on China and has already placed a string of China hawks in key positions ahead of his swearing-in in January, portending a contentious relationship in the years ahead.
How that approach will materially differ from Biden’s remains to be seen, given the current administration has taken aggressive steps to limit Chinese technology and to bolster American alliances in Asia as a counter to Beijing.
In agreeing to meet with Biden in his lame-duck period, Xi appears to be signaling a desire to maintain continuity and relative stability amid the US leadership transition.
Still, Biden administration officials acknowledged they couldn’t predict what direction the US-China relationship would take once Biden left office. But they maintained hope the approach Biden adopted might work for Trump as well.
“This is a tough, complicated relationship between the US and China, and so whatever the next administration decides, they are going to need to find ways to manage that tough, complicated relationship,” one senior administration official said.
Biden officials believe maintaining robust communication channels and engaging in “tough conversations” across the Chinese government has helped mitigate certain misunderstandings between the two superpowers. But Biden will still hand off a series of contentious issues to Trump when he departs office.
“Russia, cross-strait issues, South China Sea, and cyber are areas the next administration is going to need to think about carefully, because those are areas of deep policy difference with China, and I don’t expect that will disappear,” the official said.
The final meeting between the leaders of the world’s largest economies comes at a precarious global moment. Since Biden entered office, Xi has deepened his relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin while also maintaining strong ties with Iran and North Korea, creating an anti-US network that has generated increasing concern in Washington.
American officials have also watched with alarm as China conducts aggressive military exercises around Taiwan, leading to worries Beijing could move on the self-governing island in the next few years.
How Trump approaches the new world reality remains to be seen. Trump attempted to cultivate strong ties with Xi early in his first presidency, but their relationship soured amid trade disputes and the origins of Covid-19.
Trump and Xi spoke last week, CNN reported, as the Chinese leader looks to ascertain what the next four years will hold.
As he builds out his administration, Trump has selected advisers who advocate a tough approach to China, including Rep. Mike Waltz to serve as national security adviser and potentially Sen. Marco Rubio as secretary of state.
Trump has also vowed to impose tough tariffs on Chinese imports as a way to protect American industry.
The moves suggest a confrontational approach to Beijing will be in the offing, making Biden’s final meeting with his counterpart a moment to discuss the path forward.
Biden has placed communication at the center of the Xi relationship, prioritizing regular phone calls and meetings as a way to ensure no miscommunications. He’s also found some areas for cooperation, including on fentanyl trafficking and climate change.
He’s also poured money into American attempts at competing with China on the global stage through infrastructure investments in the developing world.
Even ahead of the meetings, however, shifting global power dynamics have been on display. While in Peru, Xi inaugurated a $1.3 billion port, an extension of China’s efforts at making inroads across the southern hemisphere.
Saturday’s meeting also has some symmetry to the last time Trump took office. Almost exactly eight years ago in one of his final foreign trips, former President Barack Obama met with Xi also in Lima just after Trump had been elected to the presidency the first time.
Former Obama foreign policy adviser Ben Rhodes wrote about that 2016 meeting in his book “The World As It Is: A Memoir of the Obama White House,” writing that Xi asked Obama about the president-elect.
“Toward the end of the meeting, Xi asked about Trump. Again, Obama suggested that the Chinese wait and see what the new administration decided to do in office, but he noted that the president-elect had tapped into real concerns among Americans about the fairness of our economic relationship with China,” Rhodes wrote.
“Sitting across the table from Obama, he pushed aside the binder of talking points that usually shape the words of a Chinese leader. ‘We prefer to have a good relationship with the United States,’ he said, folding his hands in front of him. ‘That is good for the world. But every action will have a reaction. And if an immature leader throws the world into chaos, then the world will know whom to blame,’” Rhodes continued.
