The meeting was reported as an attempt to improve relations between the world’s two largest economies and militaries, but is unlikely to move the needle in any perceptible way, scholar, journalist and geopolitical analyst specializing in the Asia-Pacific KJ Noh told Sputnik’s Political Misfits.
“I don’t think it’s really in the cards. If you look at the Chinese readouts [of the meeting], they essentially focus on the Chinese desire to get along with the United States. Their point is [that] we can’t be enemies and cooperate. [The US has] to make a decision,” Noh began. “They always come back to the Bali agreements, even the ‘Five Nos’ - no Cold War, no hot war, no regime change, no block forming, no support of secession… They want the US to affirm that. And the Chinese explicitly mentioned that in their readout. The US [readout] does not mention that.”
Despite occasional public overtures by the United States, its actions have been consistently aimed at limiting China’s growth and influence. The United States saw itself fit to insert itself in territorial disputes in the South China Sea. It has also supported Chinese separatists in Taiwan, held military drills in the region, flown spy planes right on China’s borders, and stationed troops just a mile off of China’s coast.
Then there is the economic warfare. “If you recall, when they initially rolled out these [micro]chip sanctions, [influential think tanks] crowed that they had essentially destroyed China’s economy. They said they had China in a four-point chokehold and they were strangling with intent to kill, that this was a declaration of war. They never walked back those statements,” explained Koh. “Jake Sullivan emphasized in the readout that the US will continue to take necessary actions to prevent advanced US technology from being used to undermine national security, that means they’re going to continue the tech war against China.”
Despite the United States’ hand-wringing about national security and election interference, Koh suspects the real reason for the tech war, particularly on Chinese tech giants Huawei and ByteDance, is to maintain the US “monopoly control over the backbone of the internet and social media companies for geostrategic reasons.”
Huawei is the world’s largest supplier of telecommunication equipment that makes up the backbone of the internet, like routers and servers. ByteDance owns TikTok, one of the most popular and fastest-growing social media platforms, boasting 170 million users in the United States and more than a billion worldwide.
The upcoming call between Xi and Biden will be to let China know that if Harris wins in November, the Harris administration is “essentially going to keep our policies as is.”
“I think they want to position themselves as a better alternative than [former US President Donald] Trump who the Chinese are weary about because he’s so unpredictable despite his kind of transactional neo-mercantile approach to China,” explained Koh. “But what we do have to note is anything that Trump did in terms of escalating against China, the Biden administration has maintained and then took it up several notches. All you have to do is look at the tariffs [and] you’ll see that the Biden administration has been much, much, much worse.”
Koh speculated that Sullivan wanted to stabilize relations between the countries before the election but afterward “the escalation against China will continue.”
“Right before this meeting, there was a massive high-level delegation of DPP Taiwan separatist officials who came to the United States. Right after this meeting is over, there will be further meetings with high-level separatists. And so, there’s always this doubled-edged message that the US is sending.”
So from a Chinese perspective, there are no good choices in November, Noh contended. “I don’t think they’re making plans for either administration. The Chinese outlook is just literally the long term. They believe that if they can avoid war, and if they can avoid nuclear war, then eventually, things will stabilize and the United States will hopefully find a modus vivendi.”