Prior to his meeting with Xi, Biden is trying to be accommodative, but there has been a noticeable thawing of the relationship.
China faces an ongoing trade war with the US and a fresh attempt to deny China access to high-end American chip-making technology that, according to some commentators, is designed to slow China’s rise “at any price”.
Beijing argues that the chill is being driven by America’s desire to maintain its position as the pre-eminent world power.
President Joe Biden’s National Security Strategy defines Beijing as a bigger threat to the existing world order than Moscow. And Washington has begun to talk about a Chinese invasion of democratic Taiwan as an increasingly realistic prospect rather than a distant possibility.
This is a long way from the days when both US and Chinese leaders would declare that mutual enrichment would eventually outweigh ideological differences and tensions between an established superpower and a rising one.
Read more from the BBC’s John Sudworth here – Can the US live in Xi Jinping’s world?
Source: BBC