Outgoing President Joe Biden will have what is believed to be his last in-person meeting with genocidal Chinese dictator Xi Jinping on Saturday in Peru, where both leaders are expected to attend the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit.
The Chinese state news agency Xinhua reported on Wednesday that Xi had already departed Beijing for the long journey to Lima, alongside his top diplomats and Communist Party officials. Biden will travel to Peru on Thursday and is expected to remain there through Sunday, when he will travel to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, for the annual G20 summit. The White House also announced Biden would make a stop in Manaus, a city deep in the Amazon Rainforest, to “engage with local, indigenous, and other leaders working to preserve and protect this critical ecosystem.”
Xi and Biden are expected to use their time together to review “efforts to responsibly manage competition over the last four years,” an unnamed senior Biden White House official told reporters on Wednesday. The official adamantly refused to answer questions regarding how Biden would handle discussing the transition from his administration to the incoming team under President-elect Donald Trump, which is expected to adopt a much less conciliatory stance with the rogue communist regime.
Trump will return for a second term in office in January. During his first term, he prioritized opposing nefarious Chinese behavior around the globe, including the Communist Party’s ongoing colonization of Africa; its support for human rights abusers such as the regimes of Venezuela, Cuba, and Iran; and its rampant intellectual property theft and espionage. Trump signaled this week that he would restore his assertive stance on China’s global crimes by nominating Se. Marco Rubio (R-FL) to run the State Department – the Chinese government sanctioned Rubio in 2020 for supporting human rights activists in Hong Kong and speaking out against the ongoing genocide of Uyghurs and other indigenous communities in occupied East Turkistan.
Prior to Trump’s return, however, Biden is set to meet with Xi one last time to evaluate their relationship over the past four years. According to the senior administration official, Biden will “use the opportunity to take stock of efforts to responsibly manage competition over the last four years, how the two countries have advanced areas of shared interest, and, even amidst deep differences and intense competition, have worked to do so.”
The official described as victories for the Biden administration communication between the Chinese and American militaries, as well as “deep and meaningful discussions” between the two countries’ “climate envoys … leading to three far-ranging joint statements.”
The official emphasized that “there’s not a long list of outcomes or deliverables” attached to the Peru meeting.
“I think this meeting will reflect on the progress to date, and we’ll expect to try to continue to ensure that we’ve got those channels working, law enforcement and mil-mil in particular, which we see as critical to underpinning stability in the relationship in the period ahead,” the official added.
The Biden administration’s policies on China have been catastrophic for America’s stature abroad and the bilateral relationship with Beijing, beginning with an embarrassing meeting in March 2021 staged in Alaska. The meeting, hosted by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, granted Chinese diplomats an opportunity to harangue the Americans about “black lives matter” and allege the American government is a human rights criminal, with little to no pushback. The Biden officials reportedly did not respond by acknowledging the Uyghur genocide, China’s live organ harvesting from political prisoners, or its violent and gruesome silencing of people of faith and political dissidents.
Biden has met with Xi personally on two occasions, the latest in San Francisco a year ago. California hosted the 2023 APEC summit and the two leaders met on the sidelines of the event at the lavish Filoli estate in the Bay Area. After a four-hour-long private meeting, Biden convinced Xi to send pandas to the San Diego Zoo.
Watch: #XiJinping and Joe Biden have one-on-one talks at Filoli Estate. #ChinaUS
— CGTN (@CGTNOfficial) November 16, 2023
Live updates: https://t.co/OlS69jIXq9 pic.twitter.com/eD7dKZSdie
The meeting also resulted in the resumption of military communications, which China abruptly cut off after former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) visited Taiwan in August 2022.
“For two large countries like China and the United States, turning their back on each other is not an option,” Xi said during the public portion of the meeting. “It is unrealistic for one side to remodel the other, and conflict and confrontation has unbearable consequences for both sides.”
Xi issued a statement congratulating Trump on his election victory this month, even amid widespread reports that Trump would adopt a less favorable policy to the Communist Party than Biden.
“History tells us that both countries stand to gain from cooperation and lose from confrontation,” Xi said in his congratulatory statement. “A China-U.S. relationship with stable, healthy and sustainable development serves the common interests of the two countries and meets the expectations of the international community.”
Biden also promised in a meeting with President-elect Trump on Wednesday that he would “do everything [he] can to make sure [Trump is] accommodated” in the Oval Office. Trump defeated Biden’s vice president, Kamala Harris, in the November 5 presidential election.
Follow Frances Martel on Facebook and Twitter.
