Stephen Roach

Opinion | Xi and Biden can go beyond diplomatic kabuki by setting up a US-China secretariat

The personalised politics of leader-to-leader exchanges needs to be augmented by an institutionalised framework of relationship management

Establishing a permanent secretariat to share information and tackle common issues would build trust and elevate the bilateral relationship to the importance it deserves

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Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Joe Biden shake hands before their meeting on the sidelines of the G20 summit meeting on November 14 in Nusa Dua, Bali, Indonesia. Photo: AP

Stephen Roach

Published: 2:15pm, 29 Nov 2022Updated: 3:12pm, 29 Nov 2022

Summits have long been portrayed as the crown jewels of diplomacy. Such was the hope with the Bali meeting between US President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping.

Notwithstanding the images of two beaming presidents grasping hands before their three-hour meeting, the summit accomplished little. Predictably, it was long on rhetoric. Biden ruled out any possibility of a new cold war, and Xi stressed the need to put the US-China relationship back on track. Post-summit readouts stressed the platitudes of frank, direct and candid discussions between old friends.

But with the US-China conflict having escalated dramatically in the past five years – from a trade war to a tech war, to the early skirmishes of a new cold war – the summit was remarkably short on action.

The bilateral relationship had deteriorated further in the three months leading up to the summit – underscored by Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, the Chips and Science Act and the Biden administration’s sanctions on exports of advanced semiconductors to China. America’s hardline approach was on a collision course with China’s increasingly muscular intransigence.

The rhetoric at the summit did nothing to change that. High tariffs remain in place. And the Biden administration is building a new “coalition of the willing” to join its campaign to stifle Chinese efforts in artificial intelligence and quantum computing – crucial to the country’s push for indigenous innovation.

Moreover, while Taiwan anxieties were lowered, that may be short-lived; America’s presumptive next Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, has promised a quick trip to Taipei – taking aim at the diplomatic “red line” Xi highlighted in Bali. The cold-war denialism in both leaders’ summit statements doesn’t exactly fit the facts.