US President Joe Biden greets Chinese President Xi Jinping before a meeting during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Leaders Week in Woodside, California, on November 15, 2023.
Brendan Smialowski | afp | fake images
Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Joe Biden will strive to keep tensions between the world’s two largest economies at bay next year, while focusing on domestic challenges.
The two leaders met last week on the sidelines of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders’ meeting in San Francisco after the global rivalry between world powers came to a head earlier this year.
Their first meeting in a year capped months of diplomatic work aimed at normalizing their unstable bilateral relationship, derailed by an alleged spy balloon over the continental United States in early 2023 and the visit to Taiwan by the former speaker of the House of Representatives. , Nancy Pelosi, in August 2022.
“You will see in the coming months that the United States and China are trying to put a ceiling on their tensions for very pragmatic and internal reasons,” Steve Wilford, partner and head of global risk analysis for Asia Pacific at Control Risks, told CNBC on Monday. .
Xi Jinping wants to fix his economy, he does not need the problem to be aggravated by a continuous spiral of trade and technological tensions with the United States.
Steve Wilford
Control risks
Xi and the Chinese Communist Party are grappling with a slowdown in growth in the world’s second-largest economy, which has been hit by a crisis in its real estate sector.
“Xi Jinping wants to fix his economy, he doesn’t need the problem to be exacerbated by a continued spiral of trade and technology tensions with the United States,” Wilford said. “And similarly, the Biden administration has an election to deal with and doesn’t need to be distracted by Beijing.”
Biden, 80, faces disappointing approval ratings and trails Donald Trump in polls in a possible rematch in the November 2024 US presidential election. Many have cited Biden’s age and his handling of the economy as two of its greatest weaknesses.
Xi told a meeting of American business executives last week that the United States and China have to choose between being adversaries or partners, comments that contrast with Biden’s approach of pursuing strategic competition with Beijing by restricting exports of advanced American technology to China, as it seeks areas of cooperation.
