Reuters World News - Biden meets Xi in San Francisco

Episode Date: November 12, 2023

Presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping are set to meet face to face in San Francisco this week. The high stakes diplomacy is aimed at curbing tensions between the two world superpowers as geopolitical risks envelop the world. In this weekend podcast episode, White House correspondent Trevor Hunnicutt explains what to expect from the historic meeting on the sidelines of the APEC summit. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping are set to meet face-to-face in San Francisco on Wednesday. The high-stakes diplomacy is aimed at curbing tensions between the two world superpowers, as geopolitical risks envelop the world. In this weekend podcast episode, we preview what to expect from Biden and Xi's meeting on the sidelines of the APEC summit. I'm Kim Vennel in New York. My Reuters colleague Trevor Hunigate has been covering the White House since Biden was elected after many years as a political and economic journalist.

He'll be traveling with the president to APEC in San Francisco next week. Hey, Trevor, thanks for joining me. Hi, Kim. Happy to be here. So what's on the table here? What are Biden and Xi going to tackle? So to just put this in the words of a senior Biden administration official, everything's on the table. So because Biden and she have not spoken for a year, there's a lot to talk about here.

And so Joe Biden is being prepped to talk about everything and anything. And that ranges from some really serious concerns that the United States has around what China is doing in the Indo-Pacific. They're very concerned about some security issues that have happened between China and the Philippines, China and Taiwan, China and other countries in the region. So they're going to talk a whole lot about that. They're going to talk about the Taiwanese elections that are happening in January, that, the United States wants to see be free, fair, and democratic. They're going to talk about what's going on in the Middle East. They're going to talk about Ukraine, North Korea. They're going to talk about areas where the U.S. and China still might be able to collaborate, whether that's climate or

counter-narcotics or artificial intelligence. So this is really a substantial meeting. We expect that these leaders are going to be talking for some hours about everything under the sun. What does Biden want from Xi in terms of Israel and Gaza? So this is a really interesting area because China has sent out some messaging that has kind of suggested opposition to the way that Israel is conducting its offensive against Hamas and Gaza. And so I think the United States and China are going to have a really difficult conversation about exactly the role that China is playing right now. One thing that Biden is going to want Xi to do is to use the deeper relationship that China has with Iran these days to kind of encourage Iran not to get involved in this conflict because that's kind of the biggest risk that the U.S. sees in the Middle East right now is that this conflict that's between Israel and Hamas in Gaza becomes a regional war that sucks the United States in. And so he's kind of asking Xi to play a mediator role with Iran and convince them that getting involved in this war would trigger a U.S. response and would be really bad for them. And then I think he also will want China to play a role that's kind of closer to U.S. policy in terms of supporting what Israel is doing.

What about the war in Ukraine? So on Ukraine, China and Russia have extremely close relationship. They have this no limits partnership. Putin and Xi are personally very close. And I think Biden is going to try to suss out just how close and how much Xi is willing to do for Putin. I think it's also fair to say that Biden is going to continue to make a case that he's been making to Xi and to the Chinese government for a very long time, which is that their support

for Russia in Ukraine is risky for them, right? that there are some contingencies that could happen here that would be really negative for China. You know, if the war between Russia and Ukraine becomes a bigger European war that sucks in NATO and sucks in the United States, that might be really bad for energy prices. It might create a whole host of challenges that kind of reverberate in China. And so Biden will continue to kind of make this case that he's been unsuccessful at so far in convincing China that their closeness with Russia is actually going to hurt them in the long run.

Just remind us, again, Trevor, as succinctly as possible, why relations are so low between the two superpowers? So the U.S. and China are far apart in terms of how they see the world, and China is actively undermining a lot of U.S. policy around the world. So the hostile relations between these countries was best illustrated by the suspected Chinese spy balloon that transited the United States in February. And Biden shot that balloon out of the sky. And it kind of symbolized where relations are between these two countries, hostile and with a lack of communication. And that's what Biden is trying to solve at this summit. Yeah, that's such a vivid illustration. What about the relationship between the two men? Sure. So Biden and she have known each other for roughly a dozen years. They met when both of them were kind of playing second fiddle to their commanders in chief. And they've had a lot of time to talk during the Biden administration, even though they haven't spoken in a year. They had six interactions before relations got very frosty. And they've spoken for hours. It's not new for the two of them to talk about global issues in depth.

And, you know, this will be another example of two very experienced political leaders having a frank and candid conversation about their differences. And the backdrop for this will be interesting because it's at a summit with a lot of countries and a lot of protests. And so that creates some unpredictability around what exactly will happen. You touched on Israel and Gaza and Ukraine. What about the chip war? Is the economy going to be on the table for discussion? Totally. So Xi and Biden are absolutely going to be talking about the economic competition between the two of them. I mean, historically, U.S. and Chinese relations, one of the biggest issues has always been the fact that these two economies are fundamentally dependent upon one another. And yet they're both unhappy with a lot of the things about the economic relations that they have. And so we absolutely expect that that will be a key topic of conversation. She is dissatisfied with the most. move by the United States to decouple, I think a lot of Chinese people think it is, you know, to move the U.S. away from supply chains that are relying on China, to deny China access to technology like semiconductors that they need to modernize their defenses and modernize their economy.

And Biden is dissatisfied by a lot of the trade moves that China has made that the U.S. thinks are really unfair. So that's absolutely going to be a huge topic for the United. the two of them. Should we expect concrete things to come out of this meeting? There will be things that are concrete. I don't think they will be mind-blowing. Most of what will happen are commitments to talk, you know, a commitment to let's actually sit down at the table, let's have our policy people look at one another across the table and discuss these really tough issues, from narcotics to artificial intelligence to climate, and let's see what progress we might be able to make.

And there may be a few goodwill gestures, you know, around the margins. I don't think it will be anything significant. But really what this summit is about is reopening diplomacy and actually having a conversation about the tough issues, even when we disagree. What about the issue of protesters? San Francisco is known for its protest movements. So this is a really weird situation because President Sheet, one, does not travel very much. And two, when he does travel, he's not used to seeing people. who are openly demonstrating against him. That's not something you see in China. It's not usually something you see at international summits that Xi is attending. So what we think is that San Francisco is going to be a really interesting test of the ability of the U.S. and Chinese governments to avoid making a scene. And we know that that's going to be difficult because the protesters plan to come out in force. We know already of a number of groups that are anti-she that are aligning with one another and plan to make this.

streets of San Francisco very exciting next week. And then we also know that the U.S. has been very guarded about saying exactly where this summit is going to take place. All they've said is that this is going to be in the San Francisco Bay Area, which is a very broad description. And usually they would tell us where the venue is going to be for an event like this in advance. And we don't have that information. And that's because of the sensitivity around. not just security, but also respect for the Chinese leader. He doesn't want to be embarrassed on this trip. A huge thank you to Trevor and the Reuters journalists from around the world,

who will be covering the APEC summit. We'll have all the latest developments in our daily headline show on Monday. Tune in every weekday for 10 minutes for everything you need to know about your world. And don't forget to subscribe and rate us on your favorite podcast player or download the Reuters app.