President Joe Biden will meet with his Chinese counterpart President Xi Jin Ping at the G20 summit. The pair will allegedly be discussing their disparate national security concerns.
The two-day G20 Summit is set to take place on the Indonesian island of Bali on Nov, 15-16 according to Newsweek. This is expected to be the first in-person meeting between the two since Biden’s controversial rise to power in 2020 and Xi successfully consolidated his power with a third five-year term in October.
The abolition of the two-term limit in China could by the end of this term make Xi the longest-reigning Chinese leader since Mao Zedong.
“I’m not willing to make any fundamental concessions,” Biden said at the White House, adding that in his meetings with Xi, he’s told him before: “I’m looking for competition, not conflict.”
He continued, “What I want to do with him when we talk is lay out what each of our red lines are, understand what he believes to be in the critical national interests of China, what I know to be the critical interests of the United States, and to determine whether or not they conflict with one another.”
“And if they do, how to resolve it and how to work it out,” Biden added.
“[T]he Taiwan doctrine has not changed at all from the very beginning—the very beginning,” Biden said. “So, I’m sure we’ll discuss…Taiwan. And I’m sure we’ll discuss a number of other issues, including fair trade and relationships relating to his relationship with other countries in the region.”
The comment raised eyebrows and was reminiscent of former President Barack Obama’s infamous ‘red-line’ bluff in Syria against President Bashar al Assad. Obama had declared in August of 2012 that the use of chemical weapons against civilians in the Syrian civil war would cross a ‘red-line’ resulting in American military intervention. Approximately a year later on August 21, 2013, Assad fired rockets laden with sarin gas into rebel-controlled towns.
As Politico wrote, “the Syrian military had attacked rebel-controlled areas of the Damascus suburbs with chemical weapons, killing nearly 1,500 civilians, including more than 400 children. Horrific video footage showing people with twisted bodies sprawled on hospital floors, some twitching and foaming at the mouth after being exposed to sarin gas, had ricocheted around the world. This brazen assault had clearly crossed the “red line” that President Barack Obama had enunciated a year earlier—that if Assad used chemical weapons, it would warrant U.S. military action.”
The promised response from Obama never came.
Zhao Lijian, of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, told the press in Beijing that China “attaches importance to the U.S. proposal to hold a meeting between the two heads of state in Bali.”
“We are willing to work with the U.S. side to realize mutual respect, peaceful coexistence, win-win cooperation, while at the same time resolutely defending our own sovereignty, security and development interests,” he said, adding that Taiwan is still “the core of China’s core interests.”
If Chinese military action against Taiwan represents another ‘red-line,’ then the Taiwanese people should definitely be concerned. Because with this comment Biden has given a message to China and the world, that no American response will come.
