US-China ties: Reducing tensions, not resetting the relationship yet

NOTHING really earth-shaking took place in the 'virtual summit' last week that brought together Chinese president Xi Jinping and US leader Joe Biden. It neither produced any diplomatic breakthroughs nor did it result in any trade deals.

The main reason the zoom event was newsworthy was because it, well, happened, and that it may have halted the downward spiral in the relationship between the world's 2 major powers and helped to create the conditions for some kind of diplomatic detente between Beijing and Washington. Indeed, you didn't have to be a foreign policy expert to observe that against the rising tide of nationalism in both China and the United States, their bilateral relationship has been dominated by growing tensions in the geo-strategic and geo-economic arenas, over policy issues ranging from Taiwan to trade.

While President Xi has been consolidating his power in Beijing and asserting China's expanding role as a regional and global power, President Biden, reflecting a growing bipartisan consensus in Washington, has pledged to maintain US economic and military primacy vis-a-vis China. Many American lawmakers and pundits have compared the confrontation between the two nations to a new Cold War although the Biden administration has refrained from employing that term and described it instead as a "competition". Yet each side has accused the other of violating international agreements and norms, with Washington decrying Chinese policies in Hong Kong and towards its Muslim minorities, and the Chinese contending that the US has been strengthening its security partnerships in the Indo-Pacific region in order to challenge China.