China’s Foreign Ministry has responded to President Biden’s comments after the US leader talked up the “real problems” facing the People’s Republic.
“President Xi is another example of how reestablishing American leadership in the world is taking hold. They’ve got real problems, folks,” Biden told Democratic donors in San Francisco Tuesday night, less than 24 hours before his long-awaited meeting with the Chinese leader on Wednesday.
"I think there is no country in the world that does not have problems," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning told reporters. “China has the leadership of the Communist Party and the path of socialism with Chinese characteristics... We are confident that we will achieve better development and gain brighter prospects.”
China hopes that the United States “can also truly solve” its own “problems” and give a better life to the American people, Mao added.
“The key to stabilizing and improving China-US relations is both sides working together, and the most fundamental condition is mutual respect,” the spokeswoman stressed, expressing hope that the US will join China in putting ties on the track of “healthy and stable” development.
Wednesday’s meeting between Presidents Xi and Biden will be their first interaction in over a year, with the leaders communicating six times since Biden’s election in 2021, but meeting in person only once.
Biden also communicated with the Chinese president while serving as Barack Obama’s vice president, and repeatedly boasted on the campaign trail in 2020 that he had travelled “17,000 miles” with Xi in that capacity, and held “24-25 hours of private meetings,” leaving him confident that he knows the Chinese leader “pretty well.”
Biden’s claims were challenged, with media pointing out that the only time the US politician and Xi actually traveled together was when they visited a local high school in Dujiangyan in 2011. A White House official clarified that the “traveling with” line was a “reference to the total travel back and forth – both internally in the US and China, and as well as internationally – for meetings they held together,” some “in parallel, some…separately to joint destinations.”
The China-US relationship under President Biden has continued the slide which began under his predecessor, Donald Trump, who declared a multi-trillion dollar trade and technology war against the People’s Republic in 2018. Biden has added to these anti-China economic measures, and ramped up geopolitical and military pressure on Beijing by expanding US support for Taiwan, inking new security arrangements and weapons contracts with Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines aimed at hemming China in along its home shores, and collapsing the personal diplomacy-based relationship between Washington and Pyongyang established under Trump.
The APEC forum is taking place in San Francisco, California between November 11-17, with a leaders’ dialogue set to take place on November 16, followed by a leaders’ retreat on the final day of the summit. APEC is an inter-governmental bloc with 21 members of the Pacific Rim, including China, Russia, Thailand, South Korea, Indonesia, Australia, Mexico, New Zealand, Canada, Peru, Malaysia, Chile, the Philippines, Singapore, Japan, Vietnam, Brunei, Papua New Guinea, the Chinese special administrative region of Hong Kong, Taiwan and Bangladesh.