Trump looms large over meeting between Biden and Xi on sidelines of APEC summit

United States president-elect Donald Trump loomed large over a meeting between incumbent Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Peru, experts said on Monday (Nov 18).

During Saturday’s two-hour meeting at a hotel where Xi was staying, the Chinese leader said the issues of Taiwan, democracy, human rights and rights to development are "red lines" for China which are not to be challenged.

This came even as Xi vowed to work with the next US administration. 

“He was trying to say that perhaps the US should stop export controls, or at least limit them and perhaps let China develop itself the way it wants,” political analyst Philippe Le Corre, who specialises in China’s relations with the world, told CNA’s Asia First.

Trump, who will be sworn in as the 47th US president on Jan 20, has vowed to adopt a blanket 60 per cent tariff on US imports of Chinese goods as part of his "America First" measures.

Le Corre noted this is the first time since the US election about two weeks ago that Xi has been clear and detailed on what he does not like about the bilateral relationship. 

“Xi came up with very harsh messages and (was) straightforward … He wants to show Donald Trump that the relationship has to (be) on China's terms, in many ways,” said the senior fellow at US-based think tank Asia Society Policy Institute's Center for China Analysis.

“What I find really striking about about Xi Jinping’s words and attitude in this meeting is that he really wants to assert China as a great power, and he wants the United States - whoever is in power - to acknowledge that China is no longer a developing power, but it is a superpower, a great nation,” he added.

US-CHINA TRADE RELATIONSHIP

Trump plans to hire several hawkish voices on China in senior roles, including US Senator Marco Rubio as secretary of state and Representative Mike Waltz as national security adviser, noted Le Corre.

He added that Trump is a fan of tariffs. 

China knows it is “going to get hit by a train in the form of new tariffs”, said Robert Daly, director of the Wilson Center's Kissinger Institute on China and the United States.

He added that the country has been preparing for Trump by doing what it can to sanctions-proof its economy and decoupling, “so China is not on its back heel”. 

“We should expect China to come back quickly to any actions of the Trump administration with a prepared response,”  he told CNA938’s Asia First.

POSITIVE MEETING OUTCOMES

Amid the countries’ jostle for power, there were some bright spots from the meeting, experts noted. 

The leaders agreed that humans, not artificial intelligence, would make the final decisions on the use of nuclear weapons.

“That may just sound like an obvious and not important principle, but in fact, this is the first kind of nuclear agreement that (the US) has had with China,” said Daly.

“It's not a nonproliferation agreement, but at least we're speaking about nuclear weapons, which is going to be a growing issue in the relationship.” 

SHOW OF POWER

Daly noted that Xi was in Peru not only for the APEC meeting, but also to open up a major new port in Chancay, north of capital Lima. 

“This is a story about China's success … in the Western hemisphere, about its investments in Latin America … it’s increasing soft power there,” he said.

He noted that Xi and Biden “danced around what seems to be the fact that the two countries are already engaged in a new kind of cold war”.

“They took pains not to use that language, and yet the depth of their competition all over the world, in every domain of power - in cyberspace, in outer space - is now undeniable, and that is what will be firmly in place when Donald Trump takes office.”