Biden and Xi discuss US-China cooperation and conflict

Beijing’s 2020 national security law, which fundamentally altered Hong Kong’s freedoms, is another source of tension; experts say the law could make foreign firms hesitant to do business in the city, jeopardizing its standing as a global financial hub. The optimism that accompanied China’s entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) twenty years ago has vanished as Beijing continues to embrace state-led development, pouring subsidies into targeted industries to the detriment of U.S. and foreign companies. Though U.S. consumers have benefited from the flood of cheaper goods from China, millions of Americans have lost their jobs due to import competition. The United States has long accused China of pressuring American companies to hand intel goes on game dev hiring spree before alchemist gaming gpu launch over their technology, or of pilfering it outright.

Everything You Wanted to Know About Trump’s Tariffs But Were Afraid to Ask

• Yet, Tai disavowed notions of “decoupling” from China, saying instead that the administration hopes to rebalance the U.S.-China economic relationship and that its objective is “not to inflame trade tensions” with Beijing.
• Both sides agreed to maintain high-level exchanges and communications on important issues “at all levels in the economic field”, which was a major outcome of the meeting between President Biden and President Xi in Bali in November 2022.
• These three categories were chosen as the target for the program due to their “critical role in accelerating the development of advanced military, intelligence, surveillance, and cyber-enabled capabilities”.
• China’s zero-Covid policies, which initially were successful in 2020 and 2021, proved to be a failure in 2022 in the face of the Omicron variant.

However, it is unclear whether they will be able to make breakthroughs on matters like export controls. The Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) of the US Department of Commerce announced that it has added 49 entities to the Entity List “for providing support to Russia’s military and/or defense industrial base”, of which 42 are Chinese. Secretary Yellen visited Beijing in July 2023, during which she met with several high-level Chinese officials, including Vice Premier He. These meetings resulted in the establishment of a joint Economic Working Group and Financial Working Group between the Department of the Treasury and the Chinese Ministry of Finance (MOF). This sentiment was echoed in the readout from the Chinese side, which stated that China and the US “do not seek economic ‘decoupling’ and welcome the development of healthy economic relations to provide a level playing field for enterprises and workers of the two countries and enhance the well-being of the two peoples”. The progress in improving US-China dialogue on climate change signals that the two countries have found common ground for cooperation and is a significant reversal of previous trends.

The statement was released after John Kerry’s three-day visit to Shanghai, which was the first official trip to China by a Biden Administration official. According to the statement, the two sides will cooperate with each other and with other countries to “tackle the climate crisis”. The two sides will also “cooperate to promote a successful COP 26 in Glasgow, aiming to complete the implementation arrangements for the Paris Agreement”. US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry and China Special Envoy for Climate Change Xie Zhenhua met in Shanghai on April 15 and 16, 2021 and announced a joint statement. The US Senate Foreign Relations Committee has approved the Strategic Competition Act of 2021, signaling bipartisan consensus on orienting US policy towards being more aggressive in efforts to counter China. American investors will be banned from buying or selling publicly traded securities in targeted companies, beginning August 2, 2021, when the new order takes effect.

As the two nations navigate contentious issues such as trade, technology, and security, the trajectory of their relationship remains uncertain. On trade, Biden’s policies—such as investment restrictions on Chinese technology sectors—were a point of friction. However, the two leaders found common ground on the importance of preventing the use of artificial intelligence in nuclear decision-making. With North Korea’s role in the Ukraine conflict raising concerns, Biden urged China to leverage its influence to prevent further escalation. A handful of countries have signed free trade pacts with the island; New Zealand and Singapore are the only developed economies to sign such agreements.

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Blinken highlighted recent steps taken by China to advance counternarcotics cooperation and enhance military-to-military communication to prevent conflict. He reiterated the US commitment to safeguarding interests and values, including human rights, and stressed the priority of resolving cases of American citizens wrongfully detained or subject to exit bans in China. According to the readout from the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA), Xi Jinping highlighted the need for global cooperation amid a turbulent international landscape, urging unity over division. He called for the US to work with China and for the two countries to “regard each other’s development as an opportunity rather than a challenge”, “to coexist peacefully and … promote the stability of China-US relations”. President Donald Trump took an even more assertive approach, imposing tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars worth of Chinese goods.

On the sidelines of the 2014 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, President Obama and President Xi issue a joint statement on climate change, pledging to reduce carbon emissions. Obama sets a more ambitious target for U.S. emissions cutbacks, and Xi makes China’s first promise to curb carbon emissions’ growth by 2030. These commitments by the world’s top polluters stirred hopes among some experts that they would boost momentum for global negotiations ahead of the 2015 UN-led Climate Change Conference in Paris. A U.S. court indicts five Chinese hackers, allegedly with ties to China’s People’s Liberation Army, on charges of stealing trade technology from U.S. companies. In June 2015, U.S. authorities signal that there is evidence that Chinese hackers are behind the major online breach of the Office of Personnel Management and the theft of data from twenty-two million current and formal federal employees.

In her speech, Tai emphasized the downsides of trade with China, pointing to what she described as a hollowed-out steel industry and the decline of U.S. solar panel manufacturing. She argued that existing tools such as the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) dispute settlement system have failed to address the fundamental challenges presented by China’s increasingly state-centric economic model. Yet, Tai disavowed notions of “decoupling” from China, saying instead that the administration hopes to rebalance the U.S.-China economic relationship and that its objective is “not to inflame trade tensions” with Beijing.

The readouts of the meeting were similar to that of the last one between Liu He and US Trade Representative Katherine Tai. US President Joe Biden withdrew a series of Trump-era executive orders that sought to ban new downloads of China-owned apps WeChat and TikTok. To replace the Trump-era ban, Biden signed new orders calling for the Commerce Department to launch national security reviews of apps with links to foreign adversaries, including China. During the three-day summit of the Group of Seven (G7), the leaders of the wealthy democracies criticized Beijing over human rights in its Xinjiang region, called for Hong Kong to keep a high degree of autonomy, and demanded a full investigation of the origins of the coronavirus in China.

The US Treasury has issued a proposed rule that would ban or screen American investments in China’s semiconductors and microelectronics, quantum information technologies, and artificial intelligence sectors. This is part of President Biden’s aim to “prevent the exploitation of U.S. outbound investments by China seeking to develop sensitive technologies or products that are critical to the next generation of military, intelligence, surveillance, or cyber-enabled capabilities that pose national security risks to the United States”. According to the PBOC readout, the PBOC and the Treasury signed an exchange of notes aimed at strengthening China-US financial stability cooperation. The initiative is designed to ensure that both nations’ financial management departments can maintain timely and smooth communication channels, particularly during events of financial stress or when operational risks at financial institutions arise, thereby reducing uncertainty. Per a meeting readout from the State Council, Wang championed bilateral engagement on climate change, stating that it is “not only an integral part of bilateral relations, but also an important measure to implement the consensus reached by the two heads of state” during their meeting in San tokenexus Francisco in November 2023.

Xi-Biden Summit Produces Few Breakthroughs

The US Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke with China’s top foreign policy official, Yang Jiechi, in their first high-level conversation since President Joe Biden took office. The exclusion covers a wide range of items from medical masks and gloves to blood pressure cuff sleeves and X-ray tables. The earlier tariff exclusion extension on these medical products under Trump administration’s ‘Section 301’ tariffs was set to lapse on March 31, 2021. Other agencies with similar lists include the US Department of Commerce and the Department of Defense. Each list carries different implications, though they are all designed to steer investors, suppliers, and customers away from the companies – sometimes forcibly.

If, in the process of the application review, the restricted items for export are found to “have a major impact on national security”, then the application will be sent to the State Council for further approval. Operators who export the listed items without an approved inside bar trading strategy export license face potential penalties and criminal responsibility. The meeting with Premier Li Qiang furthered the bilateral consensus that more cooperation is needed between the US and China to fight climate change.

The Biden administration will have the luxury of deciding how much to retain of what the Trump team has built. Some decisions, such as whether to maintain tariffs on $370 billion worth of Chinese goods, will be challenging. The tariffs have hurt the U.S. economy, but they have also given the United States economic leverage. Moreover, unwinding them too quickly will leave the new administration open to accusations of being soft on China. Other moves, including reviving the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue with Australia, India, and Japan; elevating the U.S.-Taiwan relationship; and sanctioning officials and companies suspected of human rights abuses in Xinjiang, are likely here to stay. Some efforts, such as the aggressive prosecution of those involved in Chinese influence activities in the United States, could be maintained but tempered significantly.

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) is leading a delegation of officials and 17 exhibitors to this year’s China International Import Expo (CIIE) as part of the largest-ever delegation of US representatives since the event’s inauguration in 2018. This will be the first face-to-face meeting between the two leaders since they spoke on the sidelines of the G20 Summit in Bali, almost exactly one year ago. In the suit, TikTok argued that the bill “infringes on its First Amendment right to make editorial choices over content curation”, while the users argued that “their right to speak on the platform is limited by the bill”. In its conclusion, the preliminary injunction found that the bill “limits constitutionally protected First Amendment speech”, and that it “oversteps state power and infringes on the Constitutional rights of users and businesses”. The talks follow the resumption of bilateral military talks in December 2023, after such talks were suspended for over a year. The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, as the Bill is titled, would make it illegal for companies to distribute, maintain, update, or enable the distribution, maintenance, or updating of a “foreign adversary controlled” application within US territory.