Top-level engagement between Washington and Beijing
is essential for the world's two largest economies to resolve the
impasse over bilateral relations, analysts said after United States
President Joe Biden held a phone conversation with Chinese President Xi
Jinping on Friday, only their second since Biden took office.
During the conversation, Xi told Biden that "for some time, due to
the US policy on China, the China-US relationship has run into serious
difficulty", and that the relationship "is not a multiple-answer
question of whether we should have good relations, but a compulsory
question of how", according to a Chinese readout of the conversation.
The White House said in a statement that during the 90-minute call
made at the request of the US side, the two leaders "discussed the
responsibility of both nations to ensure competition does not veer into
conflict".
"It's essential that the two leaders speak often and use their long
personal relationship to resolve commercial and other disputes," said
Douglas Barry, senior director of communications and publications at the
US-China Business Council.
"The current impasse will not be resolved without their involvement,"
Barry told China Daily, adding, "That said, there needs to be
engagement at many technical levels and more participation of the
business communities."
Barry said more regular calls leading to face-to-face discussions are
needed on possible topics, such as what happens with the Phase One
trade agreement expiring at the end of the year; what's required of both
countries to lift or reduce punitive tariffs; and what the plan is for
cooperating on existential threats such as global warming and pandemics.
"The status quo will remain or deteriorate further unless the two
presidents become more engaged and with a greater sense of urgency," he
said.
The latest presidential phone call, following one in early February,
was a culmination of interaction between China and the US since Biden
took office in late January, after bilateral ties had plunged to the
lowest point in four decades.
A senior Biden administration official said Biden initiated the call
with Xi "to really have a broad and strategic discussion about how to
manage the competition between the United States and China", according
to US media reports.
"It's quite likely that engagement at the leader level is really
what's needed to move the ball forward," National Public Radio quoted
the unidentified official as saying on Friday.
In March, China's top diplomat Yang Jiechi and US Secretary of State
Antony Blinken led teams for talks in Anchorage, Alaska, in which Yang
rejected Washington assuming a "position of strength" in its approach to
China.
At their Tianjin meeting in late July, State Councilor and Foreign
Minister Wang Yi marked out China's "three bottom lines" to US Deputy
Secretary of State Wendy Sherman.
The first bottom line is that the US must not challenge, slander or
attempt to subvert the path and system of socialism with Chinese
characteristics. The second is that the US must not attempt to obstruct
or interrupt China's development process. The third is that the US must
not infringe upon China's sovereignty or damage its territorial
integrity.
In his talks with Sherman, Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs Xie Feng
said that US policy seems to be demanding cooperation when it wants
something from China; decoupling, cutting off supplies, blockading or
sanctioning China when it believes it has an advantage; and resorting to
conflict and confrontation at all costs.
Douglas Paal, distinguished fellow of the Asia Program at the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said, "I am hoping that
someone on the US side realized that recent high-level interactions were
going nowhere, or, more likely, downhill, and it was time to get the
top leaders engaged."
Gary Hufbauer, a senior fellow and trade expert at the Peterson
Institute for International Economics in Washington, said the phone call
is "the best event" in a long time, which could signal a gradual
de-escalation of tension.
"Both leaders have committed to reducing carbon emissions. At the
November COP (Conference of the Parties), they can restate those
commitments and lay out specific policies to reach carbon neutrality,"
Hufbauer said of the United Nations climate change conference to be held
in Glasgow in November.