The presidents of the United States, Joe Biden, and China, Xi Jinping, began their meeting near San Francisco, California, this Wednesday (15) with a cordial handshake, while posing smiling in front of the cameras that sought to immortalize the time.
The meeting, which began at 11:15 am (local time, 4:15 pm in Brasília), took place in a mansion known as Filoli, which was used as a set for the television series Dynasty and is located in the city of Woodside, about 40 kilometers from downtown San Francisco. Biden was waiting at the mansion gates for Xi, who arrived in a black car.
The two stopped for a moment before entering the house to wave to the press, shake hands and pose smiling for the television cameras. This face-to-face meeting on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit is the first in a year between the two leaders after the one they had for about three hours in November 2022 in Bali, Indonesia, during G20 summit.
Biden arrived at the meeting with the aim of resuming communications between the two countries’ armed forces and getting China to take steps to control the flow out of its territory of chemicals used to manufacture fentanyl, a powerful opioid that has killed nearly 200 people. Americans per day, according to statistics.
In turn, Xi wants to extract from Biden a commitment that the US will not intervene in Taiwan’s presidential elections in January and will not support a possible declaration of independence for the island, which China claims as part of its territory and which Washington could defend in case of armed conflict.
Neither side envisages major agreements, but they seek to reestablish lines of communication in different areas to prevent competition between the two powers from turning into an open conflict. The two leaders have not had any formal communication, not even a phone call, since the meeting in Bali.
That face-to-face meeting ended on a positive note and was perceived at the time as a new chapter in bilateral relations after the tensions during Donald Trump’s mandate (2017-2021), when the two countries became involved in a trade war with the mutual imposition of tariffs. However, the relationship was short-lived and relations soured again after the Biden administration shot down a suspected Chinese “spy” balloon flying over the United States earlier this year.
Months of mistrust followed since the incident, but in June a complicated diplomatic dance began to revitalize bilateral relations with several members of the US government traveling to Beijing, including a visit in June by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Additionally, members of the Chinese government have traveled to the US in recent months, including Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who met with Biden in late October.
#Joe #Biden #Jinping #meet #handshakes #smiles