The relationship between the USA and China is tense than ever before. Before Biden and Xi’s first face-to-face meeting, hardly anyone was expecting a noteworthy result. Apparently it didn’t go bad at all.
Their first face-to-face meeting lasted three hours, and there was no shortage of threats and criticism. US President Joe Biden warned China’s head of state and party leader Xi Jinping against military force against Taiwan, while Xi in return called on Biden not to get involved in the conflict.
“Resolving the Taiwan issue is a matter for the Chinese and China’s internal affairs,” Xi Jinping said at the meeting with Biden in Bali ahead of the G20 summit, according to Chinese sources. It is the “first red line that must not be violated in China-US relations.”
The US has committed itself to the defense capability of Taiwan, a key trading partner of the West, which has mostly meant arms supplies. But Biden was the first US President to clearly state that the US would also come to the rescue with armed forces in the event of a Chinese attack on the democratic island republic.
Biden has his first “red line” there, which, according to a statement by the US President in the run-up to the talks with Xi, should be one of the issues. “There are very few misunderstandings between us,” Biden said. “We just have to figure out where the red lines are – and what are the most important things for each of us over the next two years.”
The reunification of Taiwan with mainland China is “a core interest of Beijing and the Communist Party,” says China expert Roderick Kefferpütz from the Merics Institute for China Studies in an interview with ntv.de. You won’t make any concessions here. “For Beijing, it is only a matter of time before the situation with Taiwan is resolved in China’s interests, no matter by what means.”
The fact that Russia’s ruler Vladimir Putin is demonstrating how an attack on a weaker neighboring state can be very miscalculating will probably not change that. Especially since Taiwan would be better protected against an attack due to its geography than Ukraine with its wide and flat fields. “Taiwan is an island with numerous mountains,” says Kefferpütz. “An amphibious landing is extremely difficult and the logistics structure is highly complex.”
The analyst sees China watching Russia’s war against Ukraine very closely. Beijing is drawing its lessons and is already drawing its consequences. “For example, China has realized the importance of telecommunications and how Elon Musk-provided Starlink militarily empowers Ukraine. That’s why Beijing has already made it clear to Musk that systems like Starlink should not be deployed in China.”
While, as expected, there is no movement towards one another on the subject of Taiwan, according to US information, Biden and Xi agreed in condemning Russian threats to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine. Both sides agreed that “nuclear war should never be waged”. The Chinese side did not mention this warning, only citing a repeated statement by Xi Jinping that wars produce no winners.
So far, so to be expected in the standard diplomatic repertoire, which was also used during the visit of Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz to Beijing. But “in relation to Russia’s threatening gestures,” according to Kefferpütz, the sentence is still important. And indeed, there are some indications that Moscow can no longer count on the support of its powerful partner China when it comes to Ukraine in the G20 group.
Because Russia is apparently ready to accept that a passage condemning the war against Ukraine will be included in a previously hardly expected final declaration. According to a Western diplomat, the Russian attack is clearly described as a war and not, as the Kremlin normally does, as a special military operation.