Ayear ago today, President Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping shook hands with each other on the sidelines of the G-20 Summit in Bali, Indonesia, in an attempt to reset the world’s most important bilateral relationship. The two men, who knew each other during their previous encounters at the vice presidential level, hoped to exploit their familiarity with one another to bring U.S.-China relations onto a more productive plane. And for a moment, the Bali talkathon seemed to have that effect. “President Biden underscored that the United States and China must work together to address transnational challenges—such as climate change, global macroeconomic stability including debt relief, health security and global food security,” a White House readout said at the time. “The two leaders agreed to empower key senior officials to maintain communication and deepen constructive efforts on these and other issues.”
It all turned out to be a mirage in the geopolitical desert. Fewer than three months later, a Chinese spy balloon was spotted hovering over the continental United States, inciting the American media into a collective freakout and giving China hawks the ammunition they needed to push the Biden administration into undermining its own engagement policy. Secretary of state Antony Blinken would cancel his trip to Beijing, citing the balloon fiasco as the reason. U.S. and Chinese aircraft and ships in the South China Sea would continue passing each other in the night. American technology export bans on China would strengthen, Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen would go on to meet with (former) House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in California, and the Chinese defense minister would snub U.S. defense secretary Lloyd Austin at a conference.
In short: U.S.-China relations have gotten worse since the November 2022 Biden-Xi meeting, not better.
The two leaders are therefore gearing up for a redo. This time, San Francisco is the destination. The issues, however, are still the same: U.S. export controls, Taiwan, territorial claims in the South China Sea, China’s burgeoning nuclear weapons program, trade disputes and Russia’s war in Ukraine. Add the weekslong Israel-Hamas war as well as the overall frostiness on both sides and it’s difficult to see Biden-Xi 2.0 going anywhere—or more accurately put, going anywhere fast.
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