'More defensive' China lowering expectations for talks with US, including Xi-Biden call, observers say

China is lowering its expectations for talks with the United States and has become more defensive, observers said, warning that a planned call between the leaders of the two countries offered little prospect of meaningful gains.

While both sides still see the need to repair deteriorating ties, Beijing has come to understand that its relationship with the US would not return to its previous state, according to Alfred Wu, an associate professor at the National University of Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy.

"China no longer thinks that it needs to have a relationship like in the past," he said.

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Lu Xiang, an expert on US-China relations at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said China was getting impatient because it believed an earlier consensus between the two nations' leaders had not been implemented.

When President Xi Jinping and US President Joe Biden met at the G20 summit in Indonesia in November, the White House said competition between the two nations should not veer into conflict, and a Chinese government statement quoted Biden as saying the US was not seeking a new cold war and did not support independence for Taiwan.

"You can say that China is getting impatient," Lu said. "The meaning of the talks is impacted if the US has no desire to implement the consensus."

On Tuesday, when asked for details of a possible call between Xi and Biden, foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said the two countries maintained "necessary communication".

But he added that "communication should not be carried out for the sake of communication".

"The US side should show sincerity, work with China to take concrete actions to help bring China-US relations back to the right track," Wang said.

China watchers said the comment was one of many signs that Beijing could be losing patience and was lowering its expectations for talks between Xi and Biden.

US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said earlier on Tuesday that Biden planned to hold a phone call with Xi now that the annual session of China's legislature had concluded.

Robert Sutter, an international affairs professor at George Washington University in the US capital, said Wang's remarks were reminiscent of the position China adopted when former foreign minister Wang Yi met US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in July.

During their meeting, China presented four demands to the US that it would have to meet if it wanted to improve ties, including a list of China's key concerns and American legislation it wanted to change.

"[China] seems to be backtracking a little bit now," Sutter said. "They are not satisfied with the situation and so they are again hinting that there are preconditions [for talks]."

He said Beijing could propose further conditions for talks between Xi and Biden to proceed, and there were parallels that could be drawn between Wang's remarks and past comments by the Chinese government.

When China halted military talks with Washington following an August visit to Taiwan by Nancy Pelosi, then speaker of the US House of Representatives, a defence ministry spokesman said the US "must show sincerity and take action" if it wanted to have constructive dialogue with Beijing.

President Xi Jinping (left) and US President Joe Biden meet on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Nusa Dua, on the Indonesian island of Bali, on November 14. Photo: AFP alt=President Xi Jinping (left) and US President Joe Biden meet on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Nusa Dua, on the Indonesian island of Bali, on November 14. Photo: AFP>

"I think there's a lot of posturing going on right now," Sutter, a former US national intelligence officer for East Asia, said. "That's my overall sense of the situation."

Wu said Chinese officials had been showing "much more aggression" when dealing with the US.

In a rare and direct comment earlier this month, Xi criticised the US during a panel discussion on the sidelines of the annual meeting of the National People's Congress.

"Western countries led by the United States have implemented all-round containment, encirclement and suppression of China, which has brought unprecedented, severe challenges to the country's development," he said.

Sutter said Xi's comments were a clear indication that China was publicly taking a tougher approach when dealing with the US, adding that Beijing's growing criticism was a "cumulative" response.

Asian countries such as Japan and South Korea have started leaning more towards Washington in recent months. The Philippines has done the same, and had recently expanded a defence pact with the US, granting American troops access to additional bases.

This momentum created by the US and its allies and partners in the region had led to greater tension in the US-China relationship, Sutter said.

"These kinds of actions aren't attractive to China, of course," he said. "And the US is moving evermore to counter the various challenges that China poses."

Wu said that even though China appeared to have adopted a more assertive stance towards the US, Beijing would maintain some form of economic engagement with the West.

Philippine Army commander Lieutenant General Romeo Brawner (front row, second from left) and US Lieutenant General Xavier Brunson (third from left) pose for a photo with Filipino and American soldiers during the opening ceremony for Salaknib, the annual joint exercise by the two armies, at Fort Magsaysay, Nueva Ecija province, Philippines, on March 13. Photo: Reuters alt=Philippine Army commander Lieutenant General Romeo Brawner (front row, second from left) and US Lieutenant General Xavier Brunson (third from left) pose for a photo with Filipino and American soldiers during the opening ceremony for Salaknib, the annual joint exercise by the two armies, at Fort Magsaysay, Nueva Ecija province, Philippines, on March 13. Photo: Reuters>

One indication of that was Yi Gang's reappointment as governor of the People's Bank of China, the country's central bank. Yi, who gained his PhD in economics in the US, was previously a professor at an American university.

Some China watchers had earlier suggested that Yi could help China raise its profile on the global stage while maintaining policy stability at home.

"China wants to keep the relationship going and benefit from economic interaction with the US," Wu said.

Ni Feng, director of CASS' Institute of American Studies, said Beijing had not changed its attitude towards high-level communication between the two countries, but it was not clear the Xi-Biden phone call would happen because Washington had backtracked on its previous promises.

"I personally think that China is not unwilling to communicate, there's no shift of attitude towards communication," Ni said.

Benjamin Ho, an assistant professor with the China programme at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, said China was likely to continue to talk to the US - but not on the basis of being characterised as a competitor or adversary.

"So long as the existing rhetoric in Washington continues, China is unlikely to want more of the same," he said.

Analysts said they did not expect any talk between Xi and Biden to amount to much. Wu said he did not have high hopes and that "nothing substantial" would come out of it.

Sutter said he also thought that the US was not expecting "awful lot" from it.

"They do want those talks to avoid war and manage this competition so we don't have a military conflict," he said. "I think that's been the goal.

"The Biden administration recognises that there is going to be a lot more tension as the US takes these actions to counter these Chinese challenges and so they're trying to manage it so it doesn't lead to this big problem for the US and the world."

Beyond the talks between the two leaders, Sutter warned that there were various sensitive issues that could lead to a further deterioration in US-China ties. They could range from a collision between Chinese and American aircraft to further tit-for-tat sanctions and issues involving Taiwan and the South China Sea.

If Beijing lost patience with the US, Sutter said the Chinese government could respond with measures that would be "detrimental to the world".

Additional reporting by Amber Wang

This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2023 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.

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