China has praised the “warm” meeting between Xi Jinping and Joe Biden in California, in a marked shift of rhetoric after months of negotiations aimed at restabilising what has been a testy relationship.
A readout from China’s foreign ministry said the US-China relationship was “the most important bilateral relationship in the world” and that “a stable and growing China is good for the United States and the whole world”.
Official rhetoric from Beijing has moved in recent months from a more aggressive stance on the US to a more conciliatory tone. A recent editorial in People’s Daily, the official Communist party newspaper, called the US an “old friend”.
Hua Chunying, China’s assistant minister for foreign affairs and a foreign ministry spokesperson, emphasised the warmth between the US and China at a personal and political level.
She posted a photo on social media of the two leaders smiling together, with Biden apparently showing Xi a photo on his phone of the Chinese president as a young man in front of the Golden Gate Bridge.
Hua also posted an image of the Flying Tigers, a squadron of US fighter pilots who helped to defend China against Japan in the second world war, saying the American and Chinese people would “never forget” each other. In recent months, Beijing has revived the story of the Flying Tigers as an example of positive US-China cooperation.
Still, China’s readout of the Xi-Biden meeting noted that “the United States should not scheme to suppress and contain China”, language that analysts said echoed cold war rhetoric of “containment”. Beijing has previously accused Washington of perpetuating a “new cold war” but Thursday’s readout said Biden had reaffirmed that this was not his aim.
Speaking at a dinner on Wednesday hosted by the US-China Business Council and the National Committee on US-China Relations, Xi praised the Flying Tigers and said he had kept in touch with some of them via letters.
Xi said the biggest question for the US and China was “are we adversaries or partners?”.
He said: “China never bets against the United States, and never interferes in its internal affairs. China has no intention to challenge the United States or to unseat it. Instead, we will be glad to see a confident, open, ever-growing and prosperous United States. Likewise, the United States should not bet against China, or interfere in China’s internal affairs. It should instead welcome a peaceful, stable and prosperous China.”
Xi received a standing ovation after his speech at the dinner. Attenders reportedly included Apple’s Tim Cook and Tesla’s Elon Musk. Tickets for the event started at $2,000 (£1,612) per person. Analysts said Xi’s decision to address a business-focused audience reflected his desire to emphasise that China was open to foreign companies.
Behind the warm words exchanged between Xi and Biden, there are still several points of tension. One of them is the fact that with China’s economy struggling, the US has tightened restrictions on the export of advanced technology. Rules affecting the export of chipmaking technology, designed to limit China’s ability to develop the most advanced semiconductors, come into effect on Thursday.
At the meeting on Wednesday, Xi said such measures “seriously hurt China’s legitimate interests”.
There was little progress on the biggest point of tension between the two superpowers: Taiwan. Experts in China – and some in the US – are worried that the Biden administration’s rhetorical support for the self-governing island, which China claims as part of its territory, is deviating from the “one China” principle, which the US officially backs.
Xi said the US should “stop arming Taiwan and support China’s peaceful reunification”, adding that “the Taiwan question remains the most important and most sensitive issue” in the bilateral relationship. Biden said the US would continue to arm Taiwan as a deterrent.
Chinese concerns about US support for Taiwan reached a zenith last year when the outgoing speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, visited the island. That resulted in an angry backlash from Beijing and the suspension of several channels of communication, including on drugs control and the military.
Those tensions showed some signs of easing on Wednesday as the two leaders agreed to restore military dialogues and reached an agreement on fentanyl. A few days earlier, the US and China put out a new joint climate statement.
