US President Biden will meet China’s President Xi at the APEC summit on Wednesday. It is an attempt at rapprochement after a low point in relations. There are plenty of topics – from the Gaza war to Taiwan.
The war in the Gaza Strip may currently be a priority for US President Joe Biden. But in the long term, China is the number one issue for the future – there is bipartisan agreement on this in the US.
Author Gordon Chang sees the USA and China in a “cold war” for technological supremacy in the world. And he sees the risk of a military confrontation, for example in the dispute over Taiwan’s independence. “China is upgrading its nuclear weapons stockpile faster than at any other time in history,” Chang told Fox News. In his opinion, the country will practically quadruple its arsenal within a decade.
Cautious steps towards each other
The Biden administration has been trying to approach China again since the dispute over the alleged spy balloon shot down by the USA. The meeting between Biden and Xi Jinping has been months in the making:
“The president is convinced that nothing is more valuable than face-to-face conversation,” Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan told CNN. “The US and China are competitors. President Biden is trying to manage that competition responsibly so that it doesn’t turn into conflict.”
