The international community hopes the G20 Summit in Bali, Indonesia, on Tuesday and Wednesday will help ease global troubles by addressing burning issues such as how to safeguard food security, promote the digital economy, phase out fossil fuels, better protect the environment, improve healthcare, facilitate trade and development, boost the world economy’s recovery, and overcome the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The summit is equally important because it has provided an occasion for a meeting between President Xi Jinping and his US counterpart Joe Biden, on the request of the US side, on Monday. The first face-to-face meeting between the two leaders since Biden took office in January 2021 has drawn worldwide attention because tensions between the two largest economies have intensified in recent times.
A slew of contentious issues, including the US’ repeated provocative moves hurting China’s core interests and worsening its security environment, plus an array of hot-spot issues including climate change and the Ukraine crisis, will be on the agenda when Xi and Biden sit down for talks on Monday.
With the US continuing its provocative moves against China, it needs both political wisdom and firm strategic resolve to keep China-US ties on the right trajectory, because a head-on conflict will be in neither side’s interest.
On Nov 9, Biden told reporters about the need to set redlines for talks at the G20 Summit, while he and other US officials have repeatedly called for safeguarding Sino-US ties with “guardrails” to avoid any unintended escalation that could spiral into a direct armed conflict. But what Washington has been doing cannot convince the international community, let alone China, about its sincerity. US politicians, including high-ranking officials, have repeatedly breached the redline over the Taiwan question and challenged the one-China principle.
The latest example is US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan. On Nov 10, while announcing that Xi and Biden will meet on the sidelines of the G20 Summit, he said the US will brief the Chinese island of Taiwan about the result of the meeting. Such blatant violation of the one-China principle exposes the two-faced nature of the US administration.
Although Beijing remains committed to promoting healthier bilateral ties, it will not sit idle and tolerate any US provocation against its sovereignty and territorial integrity and core interests. Hopefully, Biden will have a better understanding of China’s stance on issues of mutual concern and avoid making strategic misjudgments so the two countries can work together to usher in a more enabling atmosphere for bilateral cooperation.
Editorial, China Daily
