In battle of worldviews, Xi and Biden bet on responsible competition

Chinese leader Xi Jinping and U.S. President Joe Biden agreed on key steps to halt a precipitous downward slide in relations between the two superpowers on Monday during their first face-to-face meeting as heads of state.

In wide-ranging talks lasting 3 1/2 hours, they pledged to restart government dialogues on areas from climate change to food security, while encouraging expanding people-to-people ties and stressing that neither leader sought conflict.

“I look forward to working with you, Mr. President, to bring China-U.S. relations back to the track of healthy and stable growth to the benefit of our two countries and the world as a whole,” Mr. Xi said, calling for “elevating” the relationship as the two men opened bilateral talks ahead of the G-20 summit in Bali, Indonesia.

Following the meeting, Mr. Biden said the blunt and straightforward discussion with Mr. Xi about both of their intentions and priorities would help prevent misunderstandings. “I absolutely believe there need not be a new cold war,” he said.

The revived pledges of U.S.-China cooperation mark a sharp and welcome break from the deepening rivalry between Beijing and Washington, as relations have sunk in recent years to arguably their most divisive state since President Richard Nixon’s historic trip to China in 1972. Indeed, both leaders alluded to a responsibility to the world to ensure China and the United States could work together. Still, fundamental differences remain that will bring intense, ongoing competition, rooted in part in the deeply divergent worldviews of Messrs. Xi and Biden. 

Bolstered by the performance of Democrats – and defeat of election deniers – in the U.S. midterms, Mr. Biden said the elections showed “there is a deep and unwavering commitment in America to preserving and protecting and defending democracy.” Yet according to Mr. Biden, Mr. Xi has told him repeatedly that autocracies will prevail over democracies in the current struggle between world governance systems. 

“Xi genuinely believes in the unique advantage of the Chinese system,” says Tong Zhao, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Beijing. “He thinks Western democracy is going to cause greater and greater internal polarization, instability, and even chaos that fundamentally undermines America’s long-term competitiveness vis-à-vis China.” 

China under Xi Jinping

With Mr. Xi recently winning a norm-breaking third term as chief of China’s Communist Party and packing the government’s top leadership with his loyalists, this Marxist worldview will likely guide China’s approach to the U.S. for the coming decade, if not longer.

One of Mr. Xi’s goals in seeking to reduce tensions with the U.S. is to gain time for China to advance, says Dr. Zhao, who is also a visiting research scholar at Princeton University’s Science and Global Security Program.

Mr. Xi’s conviction that the decline of Western democracies is historically inevitable has emboldened him to embrace a highly ambitious agenda, to build China into a prosperous nation with a world-class military that will stand as a model for the developing world. But Beijing faces serious domestic challenges from an economic slowdown, exacerbated by Mr. Xi’s strict “zero-COVID” policies.

Bruce Dickson, professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University, says Mr. Xi has greatly strengthened the Communist Party’s controls over government, the economy, and society, while abandoning or reversing many reforms begun in 1978. 

“It’s pretty clear that the reform and opening era in China is for all intents and purposes over,” says Dr. Dickson, author of “The Party and the People.”

Mr. Xi also believes the U.S. and its allies are working to thwart China’s rise, a view that has fueled his drive to boost its self-reliance in food and other areas as a hedge against outside threats, all while developing high-tech industry and modernizing the military. 

Military buildup, and finding common ground

Inspecting a military joint command center last week in a camouflage uniform, Mr. Xi told officers “the world is undergoing profound changes unseen in a century ... and uncertainty in our country’s security situation is increasing.” Therefore, he urged, “the entire army must focus all its energy on fighting wars, focus all work on fighting, speed up the improvement of its ability to win.”

Given the irreconcilable ideological perspectives of China and the U.S., “Mr. Xi believes there is a real risk of an eventual showdown ... [so] if China can demonstrate formidable power, that is the best deterrent against perceived American aggressiveness,” says Dr. Zhao.

At the Bali meeting, the two leaders did find some common ground while clarifying and reaffirming their positions on key points of tension such as Taiwan, a self-governing island claimed by China. Mr. Xi stressed that Taiwan “is at the very core of China’s core interests ... and the first red line that must not be crossed.”

Mr. Biden reiterated Washington’s “One China” policy and said he did not think China had any imminent plans to invade Taiwan. “I made it clear we want to see cross-strait issues peacefully resolved, so it never has to come to that,” he said.

The two leaders discussed Russia’s war with Ukraine, and Mr. Xi said he is “highly concerned” about the conflict and supports a resumption of peace talks between Russia and Ukraine. 

Against the backdrop of Russia’s nuclear saber rattling, Mr. Biden said he and Mr. Xi “reaffirmed our shared belief ... that the threat or use of nuclear weapons is totally unacceptable.”

“We aren’t going to be able to work everything out. I am not suggesting this is ‘kumbaya,’” Mr. Biden told reporters after the meeting. “We are going to compete vigorously, but I’m not looking for conflict. I’m looking to manage this competition responsibly,” he said.

In this sense, Mr. Biden and Mr. Xi are on the same page, experts say, as Mr. Xi has long considered China as engaged in a systemic competition with the United States.

“We are not just engaged in a U.S.-China great power rivalry,” says Andrew Small, senior transatlantic fellow with the Asia program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States and author of “No Limits: The Inside Story of China’s War With the West.” “This is now really a challenge of a rivalry between systems. The Chinese Communist Party has understood it in these terms for some time,” he said, and “the U.S. has started to wake up to the idea.”