As critical issues hang in the balance, Xi-Biden meeting first & foremost about sizing each other up

Perhaps just shaking hands and sitting down together can be enough sometimes. At their four-hour meeting Wednesday, US President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping didn’t resolve any of the vital geopolitical issues dividing the world’s two largest economies and chief rivals for global influence, but they struck a conciliatory tone that came as a relief to other countries, especially China’s neighbors. The two leaders met at a northern California country estate, holding talks, lunching and taking a garden stroll designed to show that while the two countries are global competitors, they’re not locked in a winner-take-all faceoff. “Planet Earth is big enough for the two countries to succeed,” Xi told Biden. Biden emphasized the need to avoid miscommunication. “We have to ensure competition does not veer into conflict,” he said. The leaders’ first face-to-face encounter in a year appears to have put a floor under a relationship that at times has seemed to be in freefall over various issues, from trade and technology to U.S. support for Taiwan, China’s human rights record and even the source of the COVID-19 pandemic. For in-depth analysis and a deeper perspective on the much-anticipated Xi-Biden meeting, and how it just might be putting rocky relations back on course, FRANCE 24’s Mark Owen is joined by Alessio Patalano, Author and Professor of War & Strategy in East Asia at King’s College London.