President Joe Biden said on the eve of his much-anticipated meeting with China’s Xi Jinping that his goal for the talks is simply to try to get U.S.-Chinese communications back on stable ground after a tumultuous year. Chinese President Xi Jinping began his first visit to the United States in six years on Tuesday just after U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken took a thinly veiled swipe at Beijing by stressing the need for freedoms and rule of law. Xi is on his first visit to the U.S. since 2017. He is due to meet U.S. President Joe Biden at an undisclosed location in the San Francisco Bay Area on Wednesday morning and then attend the annual summit of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum.
Quick Read
- Biden’s Goal for Xi Meeting: President Joe Biden aims to stabilize U.S.-Chinese communications in his meeting with China’s President Xi Jinping, focusing on normalizing relations despite numerous issues.
- Meeting Location: The leaders will meet at Filoli Estate in Woodside, California, a significant venue chosen for its historical and picturesque setting.
- Expected Military Maritime Agreement: Biden and Xi are likely to announce the restoration of the Military Maritime Consultative Agreement talks, aimed at improving safety in air and sea for U.S. and Chinese forces.
- Welcoming Xi in the U.S.: Xi’s arrival was greeted by key U.S. figures, including Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and California Governor Gavin Newsom.
- Public Reactions: The leaders’ arrival saw mixed public reactions, with some demonstrating for and against China’s policies.
- Strained U.S.-China Relations: The meeting comes after a year of strained relations over issues like U.S. export controls, the shooting down of a Chinese spy balloon, and Taiwan’s engagement with the U.S.
- Focus of Biden-Xi Talks: The talks will address regional concerns, U.S. economic commitments in Asia-Pacific, and global challenges like the Israel-Hamas conflict and Ukraine.
- Indo-Pacific Economic Forum Initiatives: The White House plans to introduce initiatives for clean economy investments and anti-corruption policies through the Indo-Pacific Economic Forum (IPEF).
- Economic Discussions and Data: Economic issues, including U.S. inflation rates and China’s economic growth forecasts, will be key topics, reflecting the countries’ contrasting economic situations.
- Blinken and Tai’s Comments at APEC: At the APEC forum, U.S. officials emphasized principles of freedom and rule of law, indirectly referencing concerns about China’s regional influence.
- Filoli Estate’s Significance: The meeting venue, Filoli, is renowned for its history and beauty, providing a conducive environment for high-level discussions.
- Expectations from Biden-Xi Interaction: The meeting is seen as a chance to mitigate the world’s most dangerous rivalry and improve superpower relations.
- Protests and Demonstrations: Protests in the U.S., both in support of and against Chinese policies, underscore the complexity and global impact of U.S.-China relations.
The Associated Press has the story:
Biden and Xi arrived in California for the long awaited Summit Wednesday
Newslooks- SAN FRANCISCO, (AP)
President Joe Biden said on the eve of his much-anticipated meeting with China’s Xi Jinping that his goal for the talks is simply to try to get U.S.-Chinese communications back on stable ground after a tumultuous year.
Biden said Tuesday, shortly before departing for San Francisco to meet Xi and attend this year’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, that the nations must get “on a normal course corresponding” once again even as they have sharp differences on no shortage of issues.
“Being able to pick up the phone and talk to one another if there’s a crisis. Being able to make sure our militaries still have contact with one another,” Biden told reporters at the White House. “We’re not trying to decouple from China, but what we’re trying to do is change the relationship for the better.”
The two leaders will meet at Filoli Estate, a historical country house museum in the exclusive town of Woodside about 25 miles (40 kilometers) south of San Francisco, according to three senior administration officials. The officials requested anonymity to discuss the venue, which has not yet been confirmed by the White House and Chinese government.
Separately, a U.S. official confirmed that Biden and Xi are expected to announce an agreement that would restore talks under what’s known as the Military Maritime Consultative Agreement. The agreement is used by the U.S. and People’s Liberation Army navies and air forces to improve safety in the air and sea. Until 2020, they had been meeting regularly since 1998 for the talks. The official requested anonymity to preview the expected leaders’ announcement.
Biden arrived at San Francisco International Airport Tuesday afternoon and Xi landed shortly after. The Chinese president was welcomed on the tarmac by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, California Gov. Gavin Newsom and U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns.
Hundreds of onlookers gathered on the leaders’ motorcade route, some holding signs that read “End CCP,” the initials of Chinese Communist Party. Others held Taiwanese and Tibetan flags, while some waved huge Chinese flags. A sign that read “Warmly Welcome President Xi Jinping” was affixed to concrete bollards.
Dozens of pro-China and a few anti-China demonstrators had also gathered near the Moscone Center, the venue where many APEC meetings were being held. Police lined up vehicles, limiting the view of demonstrators from passing dignitaries’ motorcades.
The long complicated U.S.-Chinese relationship has come under heavy strain over the last year, with Beijing bristling over new U.S. export controls on advanced technology; Biden ordering the shooting down of a Chinese spy balloon after it traversed the continental United States; and Chinese anger over a stopover in the U.S. by Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen earlier this year, among other issues. China claims the island as its territory.
The talks at Filoli will give the leaders the chance to have their first engagement in a year in a picturesque backdrop.
The sprawling estate along Northern California’s coastal range features a Georgian revival-style mansion and English Renaissance gardens. It was built in 1917 as a private residence but was opened to the public in 1975 as a nonprofit and site of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
Wealthy San Francisco socialite William Bowers Bourn II named Filoli by taking the first two letters of key words of his personal credo, according to the estate’s website: “Fight for a just cause. Love your Fellow Man. Live a Good Life.” The estate’s gardens feature in Jennifer Lopez’s film “The Wedding Planner.”
Biden will also be looking to use this week’s summit of Asia-Pacific leaders to demonstrate that the United States has the gumption, attention span and money to focus on the region even as it grapples with a multitude of foreign and domestic policy crises.
The White House wants to demonstrate that Biden can remain focused on the Pacific while also trying to keep the Israel-Hamas war from exploding into a broader regional conflict and to persuade Republican lawmakers to continue to spend billions more on the costly Ukrainian effort to repel Russia’s nearly 21-month old invasion.
“President Biden this coming week will be doing a lot more than just meeting with President Xi,” White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters in Washington on Monday.
White House officials say they are cognizant that fellow APEC nations want to see better dialogue between the U.S. and China because it reduces the risk of regional conflict. At the same time, they also know that others in the region are concerned that the Pacific is too often seen through a prism in which the dominant power centers in Washington and Beijing make decisions for the region without engagement from less powerful nations.
To that end, the White House is expected to unveil new initiatives to advance clean economy investments and develop anti-corruption and taxation policies through its Indo-Pacific Economic Forum, an economic strategy announced last year aimed at countering Beijing’s commercial strength in the region.
The strategy, known by the acronym IPEF, was designed to foster trade and demonstrate American commitment to the region, after then-President Donald Trump announced in 2017 that the U.S. was withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, an Obama-era trade deal with 12 countries.
Much of the APEC’s membership is “tepid, at best” on IPEF, said Joshua Kurlantzick, a senior fellow for Southeast Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations. While TPP fell apart under Trump, the region has seen major trade deals sealed in recent years involving China, Japan, South Korea and other major regional economies. APEC members have some interest in aspects of IPEF, such as efforts aimed at bolstering supply chain resilience and the clean energy economy, but want to see Biden create further access to U.S. markets.
Biden enters the Xi meeting feeling buoyed by the U.S. economy’s strong performance. While the majority of U.S. adults believe the economy is weak, Biden has managed to prove wrong a large swath of economists who predicted that millions of layoffs and a recession might be needed to bring down inflation. The Labor Department said Tuesday that consumer prices rose at an annual pace of 3.2% annually, down from a June 2022 peak of 9.1%. Meanwhile, employers keep hiring and the unemployment rate has held below 4% for nearly two years.
Beijing released economic data last month that shows prices falling due to slack demand from consumers and businesses. The International Monetary Fund recently cut growth forecasts for China, predicting economic growth of 5% this year and 4.2% in 2024, down slightly from its forecasts in July.
China’s Xi Jinping in US for tense Biden summit and APEC
Chinese President Xi Jinping began his first visit to the United States in six years on Tuesday just after U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken took a thinly veiled swipe at Beijing by stressing the need for freedoms and rule of law.
Xi is on his first visit to the U.S. since 2017. He is due to meet U.S. President Joe Biden at an undisclosed location in the San Francisco Bay Area on Wednesday morning and then attend the annual summit of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum.
His summit with Biden will be the first face-to-face meeting between the U.S. and Chinese leaders in a year and has been billed by U.S. officials as an opportunity to reduce friction in what many see as the world’s most dangerous rivalry.
Xi waved from atop a passenger staircase attached to his Air China plane and then descended to meet U.S. officials waiting on the tarmac, including Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns.
He then got into his Chinese Hongqi, or “Red Flag,” limousine and departed the airport into the city, where demonstrations are expected both for and against his visit.
Less than two hours earlier, Blinken addressed ministers of the 21-member APEC and stressed the U.S. believed in “a region where economies are free to choose their own path … where goods, ideas, people, flow lawfully and freely.”
Blinken did not mention China in his remarks, but his language echoed U.S. rhetoric in recent years in which Washington has accused China of bullying smaller countries in the Indo-Pacific and trying to undermine what the U.S. and its allies call the existing “rules-based” order.
U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai, who with Blinken opened the APEC ministerial session, said the San Francisco meeting came at a time of “great uncertainty and challenges” for the region. She noted increasing geopolitical tensions, fragile supply chains and a worsening climate crisis.
Earlier, Biden said his goal in his talks with Xi would be to improve the relationship with China after a period of strained ties. He said he would seek to resume normal communications between the two superpowers, including military-to-military contacts.
White House national security spokesperson John Kirby told reporters Biden and Xi would also talk about the Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza as well as U.S. efforts to support Ukraine in its battle to repel Russian invaders.
Economic issues will be high on the agenda.
Biden said the U.S. does not want to decouple from China but wants to change the economic relationship for the better.
His administration has made a push to “de-risk” some critical U.S. supply chains from China as the two countries’ economic and military competition has grown.
But it has been careful to assure countries in the region, including China, that the U.S. does not seek complete economic separation, a notion that has fueled concerns among Washington’s partners and allies of a superpower showdown that would upend the global economy.
The Chinese severed military-to-military contacts with the U.S. after then-House of Representative Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited democratically governed but Chinese-claimed Taiwan in August 2022.
Restoring the contacts is a top U.S. goal to avoid miscalculations between the two militaries.
Relations between the two countries grew particularly frosty after Biden ordered the shooting down in February of a suspected Chinese spy balloon that flew over the United States.
Top Biden administration officials have since visited Beijing and met with their counterparts in an effort to rebuild communications and trust.
Several hundred mostly pro-China demonstrators carrying Chinese flags gathered outside the Chinese delegation’s hotel ahead of Xi’s arrival in the U.S.
Larger protests, including by rights groups critical of Xi’s policies in Tibet, Hong Kong and toward Muslim Uyghurs, are expected to gather near the summit venue on Wednesday.
As Biden arrived in San Francisco, shortly before Xi was due to land, dueling demonstrators greeted the U.S. president’s motorcade from the airport. Some waved Chinese flags and held banners calling for “kindly” and “warm” U.S.-Sino ties. Others held signs condemning the Chinese Communist Party.
Earlier on Tuesday, a small aircraft flew circles over the APEC summit venue in downtown San Francisco, trailing a banner that read “END CCP FREE CHINA FREE HK FREE TIBET FREE UIGHUR,” referring to China’s treatment of Uyghurs, which the Biden administration calls “genocide.”
Lush, private Northern California estate is site for Xi-Biden meeting
U.S. President Joe Biden and China’s Xi Jinping will meet at a historic country house and museum with lavish gardens for one-on-one talks aimed at improving relations between the two superpowers.
The two leaders will meet Wednesday at Filoli, a secluded estate along Northern California’s coastal range. It was built in 1917 as a private residence and later became a National Trust for Historic Preservation site. The estate is about 25 miles (40 kilometers) south of San Francisco, where leaders are gathering for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders’ conference this week.
The location for the meeting was disclosed by three senior administration officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a matter with security implications.
Bonnie Glaser, managing director of the Indo-Pacific program at the German Marshall Fund, said the location likely has met Xi’s expectations for a private meeting with Biden away from the main summit venue.
“It appears to be a quiet, secluded estate, where Biden and Xi can have an intimate conversation in a relaxed environment,” Glaser said. “Importantly, the venue is not connected to the APEC summit, so it provides the appearance that the two leaders are having a bilateral summit that is distinct from the multilateral APEC summit.”
Observers of China’s elite politics have said Xi wants to project himself to his domestic audience as equal with Biden and as commanding the respect of a U.S. president.
The estate has more than 650 acres (2.6 square kilometers), including a Georgian revival-style mansion and a formal, English Renaissance-style garden. The mansion and grounds are open daily, but the site is currently closed for three days for holiday decorating, its website says.
“A place like this allows them to get away, not just from the media, but from a lot of the other things that encourage conflict,” said Jeremi Suri, a professor of public affairs and history at the University of Texas at Austin. “If they like each other, they are likely to start trusting each other and to communicate better.”
Suri says this is what happened with U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union before it was dissolved. The two met at a secluded chateau in Reykjavik in 1986, sat by a fireplace and walked outdoors wearing heavy coats, forging a relationship, Suri said.
“We need leaders who can break through the fear,” he said.
San Francisco socialite William Bowers Bourn II named Filoli by taking the first two letters of key words of his personal credo, according to the estate’s website: “Fight for a just cause. Love your Fellow Man. Live a Good Life.”
The venue is available for private events, weddings and commercial filming and photography. The gardens feature in Jennifer Lopez’s film “The Wedding Planner.”
