U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping reiterated the importance of maintaining dialogue to manage the U.S.-China rivalry, at a summit Saturday on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum, or APEC, in Lima, Peru.
The U.S.-China relationship is the "most important" in the world, Biden said, stressing both leaders’ responsibility not to allow competition to veer into conflict.
"These conversations prevent miscalculations," Biden said of their meetings. "Over the last four years, I think we've proven it's possible to have this relationship," he said.
Xi expressed similar sentiments, saying both countries "should bear in mind the interest of the whole world and inject more certainty and positive energy into the turbulent world."
The White House highlighted ongoing areas of cooperation, including counternarcotics, as well as new areas of agreement on artificial intelligence, including the need to maintain human control over the decision to use nuclear weapons.
"We are now building a foundation for being able to work on nuclear risk reduction," national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters after the bilateral meeting.
The positive expressions belie new irritants as well as long-standing issues between the two countries.
Biden warned China over its alleged role in hacking private telecommunications providers used by U.S. government and presidential campaign officials, Sullivan said without providing details of the consequences laid out by Biden.
Biden raised the issue of Beijing’s increased military activities around Taiwan and the South China Sea, its support for Moscow's war against Ukraine and the deployment of North Korean troops to aid Russia – which, according to Biden, is a "deeply dangerous development" for Europe and the Korean peninsula, Sullivan said.
Biden has called Xi a "dictator" in the past, while Xi has accused the U.S. of being the "biggest source of chaos" in the world. Both leaders, though, have emphasized the importance of stability, and in the past four years they largely have succeeded in managing the complicated rivalry.
In their summit last year, Biden and Xi agreed to restart military-to-military communications, in part to manage potential tensions surrounding Taiwan and the South China Sea.
Multilateralism and free trade
Sullivan said Biden reiterated concern over Beijing’s "unfair nonmarket economic practices that are harming American workers and businesses." However, just hours before his meeting, Xi presented himself as a defender of "multilateralism and an open economy," to APEC leaders.
In a speech, he urged leaders to "tear down the walls impeding the flow of trade, investment, technology and services."
Foreign diplomatic sources who spoke under the condition of anonymity told VOA they are concerned that the U.S. will become more protectionist and isolationist under the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump, who will be inaugurated in January.
Under his first term as president, Trump withdrew from various multilateral agreements including the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade pact and the Paris Climate Accord. He imposed punitive tariffs on China, largely kept in place by the Biden administration, and ramped up trade pressure with other U.S. trading partners including Europe and Japan.
During his 2024 campaign, Trump vowed to place tariffs of up to 60% on all Chinese imports, and 10% to 20% on goods from the rest of the world.
In response to VOA’s question Sullivan would not speculate on the policies of the incoming administration. He said Biden raised U.S. concerns over Chinese over capacity and the distortion it could wreak on the global economy.
"The world will be able to judge for itself both the PRC [People’s Republic of China]’s approach to trade and the U.S.’ approach to over time," he said, adding that countries have begun to take "countermeasures against what they perceive to be PRC overcapacity in critical sectors."
At APEC, Xi championed a "new impetus" toward an "open Asia-Pacific economy" and supported the group’s efforts to move faster toward achieving the Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific, a proposed regional free trade agreement between the 21 APEC member economies.
China is a member of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, the largest regional free trade agreement involving 15 countries in Asia and the Pacific. The U.S. is not a member of RCEP.
In 2021, Beijing applied for membership in the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership. The regional free trade pact initially begun as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, promoted in 2015 by then-U.S. President Barack Obama.
Trump withdrew the U.S. from TPP in 2017. Following Washington's departure, the TPP eventually became CPTPP – an 11-country bloc that now constitutes one of the largest free trade areas in the world.
The Biden administration in 2022 launched the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, which includes a dozen Indo-Pacific countries. There are no market access or tariff reduction provisions in the framework — trade incentives desired by countries in the region.
IPEF is unlikely to continue in its current form under Trump, said Zack Cooper, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
"But the reality is that many countries in the region have been pretty disappointed by IPEF and so if they see it either go away or change, I don't think they'll be panicked about that possibility," he told VOA.
Xi began his South American tour by inaugurating a mega port in Peru, a $1.3 billion investment by Beijing as it seeks to expand trade and influence on the continent.
Sullivan pushed back against the narrative that Beijing has overtaken Washington as the world’s main backer of development and infrastructure financing.
"Every time we fly to South America or Africa, the press writes the story: ‘China is doing a lot; America is doing a little,’" he said in response to VOA’s question aboard Air Force One en route to Lima.
"And then you look at the numbers behind it — the total stock of American investment in Latin America and the Caribbean — and you compare that to what China is doing. We are, across our private sector and now backed up by tools like the Development Finance Corporation, investing in a wide range of technology, infrastructure, energy, health, and other projects and are an incredibly important player," he said, noting that the U.S. is investing heavily in Peru, $6.6 billion last year.
From Lima, Biden heads to the G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro Sunday, with a brief stop in the Brazilian Amazon to deliver remarks on climate change.
