Many construction sites – and the Taiwan issue
Will the talks between Xi and Biden produce tangible results? Most US China experts are skeptical. The most important thing is that the meeting takes place at all, says Colin Kahl, Professor of International Politics at Stanford University: “In part, the meeting itself is the message. And then it will be interesting to see if there is progress on the big issues. What Xi says about the conflict between Israel and Hamas, for example.”
Biden will probably urge Xi to get China to influence Iran. According to Kahl, this could prevent the conflict from spreading to the entire Middle East region. According to the professor, the same applies to Ukraine. Here, Biden will push for China to stop supporting Russia’s war of aggression.
Unintentional collision of fighter jets?
And Biden will try to re-establish reliable bilateral channels of communication between the US and Chinese militaries. The greatest danger at present is an unintentional military escalation. Kahl cited a possible collision of fighter jets over the South China Sea as an example. US aircraft regularly fly patrols there.
“China’s reaction to this is to portray our patrol flights as a provocation, to come dangerously close to us with their own fighter jets in order to push us out of the region altogether,” said Kahl. “But that won’t work, because we have always carried out such flights in international airspace and will continue to do so. So there is a real risk of an incident.”
