President Joe Biden and China's leader Xi Jinping met this week on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco.
Since China needs American companies' investments and technologies to revive its weak economy, Biden could have waited for Xi to plead for a summit and used it as leverage to demand some behavioral changes from China.
Rather than reciprocating senior U.S. government officials' multiple visits, Xi waited until last month to send Wang Yi, China's minister of foreign affairs, to visit the U.S. and only recently agreed to a meeting with Biden.
On the fentanyl issue, many China observers, including Kelley Currie, a former diplomat, quickly pointed out on X, "Don't forget that China agreed to do this exact thing in 2019 and dramatically reduced the flow of fentanyl out of China, only to switch tactics and instead supply mass amounts of precursor chemicals to Mexican cartels."
Biden clearly believes that resuming direct, high-level military-to-military contact between the U.S. and China was a significant accomplishment.
Chinese pilots frequently made dangerous maneuvers near the U.S. and its allies' military assets in the South China Sea, not because of a lack of communication but because of Xi's deliberate policy decision: China regards the international water as its territory and tries to block the U.S. and its allies from accessing it through intimidation.
It's unlikely the Chinese military's aggressive behavior in and above the South China Sea will stop after the Biden-Xi summit.
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