Politico has an article this morning about yesterday’s meeting between President Biden and the Chinese President Xi Jinping. Major stories like the Israel-Hamas War or the ongoing invasion of Ukraine often suck up all the media attention, but while these things are going on, world leaders continue to interact to find ways to work toward common goals like economic progress and human rights. Yesterday’s meeting took place in Woodside, California, and focused on a number of what are called confidence-building measures – planned procedures to prevent hostilities, avert escalation, reduce military tension, and built mutual trust between countries. These are not glamorous or headline-stealing agreements, but they serve as baby steps that make cooperation rather than confrontation the attractive option between countries that might otherwise find themselves in conflict.
This bilateral meeting was held in conjunction with the APEC summit in San Francisco, where more than a dozen Asia-Pacific nations met to discuss a variety of questions relating to the growing power of China in the region.
In yesterday’s session, Biden and Xi agreed to do a few things:
Resume high-level military-to-military communications that will avoid misunderstanding and miscalculations that can lead to accident
Help curb the flow of Chinese chemicals used in the US production of fentanyl
Continue to discuss the impacts of artificial intelligence.
It’s been a year since the last face-to-face meeting between these two leaders. But in contrast to what many of the Biden nay-sayers claim, leaders don’t always have to act in public to be leading; the groundwork for this meeting was laid through months of high-level diplomacy between the two countries.
The article provides a lot of detail about this meeting, and I suggest that you read it.
In President Biden’s remarks to the press after the meeting, he commented that he stood by his prior assessment that Xi is a dictator. In his normal “C’mon, man!” type of statement, Biden said the following: “Look, he is. He’s a dictator in the sense that he’s a guy who runs a country that is a communist country.” Last June, after Biden called Xi a dictator at a fundraiser in Northern California, the Chinese pushed back, calling the remarks absurd and a provocation. But in all of President Biden’s interactions with world leaders, he has pushed the broader theme of his presidency – that the global stage is a fight for survival between democracy and autocracy.
As Putin’s Russia is disintegrating, the emerging two-power battle for world leadership will be waged between China and the United States. These are the world’s two largest economies, representing 40% of global economic output. Here’s another story will give you information that will let you compare the economies of the two nations. One more story adds context and a slightly different perspective.
So while the Republicans in Congress are name-calling and challenging each other to fights, and while the likely 2024 nominee for President is snarling and howling in the courts and on social media, President Biden is quietly doing the work of a President.
"Anyone who is concerned that Biden is “too old” to handle the job of president isn’t paying attention. And there is simply no comparison between Biden’s carefully nuanced performance today and Trump's meandering, word-salad impersonations of James Joyce’s Ulysses minus the minimalist plot of the novel. " From Robert Hubbell's substack column this morning.
Even in the most difficult moments, a great leader will find opportunities to advance democracy.