Xi-Biden In-person Meeting Viewed as Significant

President Xi Jinping meets with US President Joe Biden in Bali, Indonesia, Nov 14, 2022. [Photo/Xinhua]

The first face-to-face meeting between the leaders of China and the United States in years is being viewed as significant for people around the world, according to officials and analysts in Bali, Indonesia.

President Xi Jinping and US President Joe Biden met in Bali on Monday on the sidelines of the 17th Group of 20 Summit and talked for about three hours. Xi said he looked forward to working together with Biden “in bringing China-US relations back to a track of healthy and stable growth to the benefit of our two countries and the world as a whole”.

The meeting of the two leaders has been noticed by people in Indonesia and around the world, and may have been a surprise to many, said Usman Kansong, director-general of information and public communication at the Indonesian Ministry of Communication and Informatics.

Their bilateral meeting was “a symbol of how to solve our problems in the world together”, he said.

Michael Vatikiotis, a summit attendee and a senior advisor at the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, a private foundation based in Geneva, Switzerland, said the meeting itself was an achievement.

“It was an extremely important meeting, and probably the main outcome of the summit, in a sense that everyone is hoping for them to meet and address issues of concern,” said Vatikiotis, a writer, broadcaster and journalist in Asia for more than 35 years. “The main achievement is they agreed to engage on different issues at the senior official level.”

Hong Kong legislator Edward Leung Hei said that the meeting will allow Biden to gain a better understanding of China, and the Chinese path to modernization and peaceful development.

As history shows, Western countries realized modernization by the path of war, colonization and plunder, thus the Western world is seriously concerned that the development of China might threaten other countries’ interests, based on a zero-sum mentality, Leung said. “It’s of utmost importance for the world to learn that Chinese modernization is the modernization of ‘peaceful development’.”

Xi told the Biden team that China-US relations should not be a zero-sum game where one side outcompetes or thrives at the expense of the other, and the success of both nations should be seen as opportunities, instead of challenges, for each other.

Jameel Al Theyabi, editor of Saudi Gazette, said the Xi-Biden meeting is important and possibly everyone in the world is looking for a result. “It is very good for world peace,” he said.

“Everyone if you ask now in Bali, Indonesia or Saudi, or anywhere in the world will give you the same answer: It’s a right decision to shake hands, to talk and to negotiate, to have dialogue,” he said.

China and the US should lead the world in these initiatives and the US should rethink and withdraw its financial, trade and technology wars it started against China, said Hong Kong legislator Kennedy Wong Ying-ho in Bali.

Moreover, the US should “stop stirring up cross-Straits tension as it would be a futile effort to derail China’s peaceful development, which has contributed so much to the world’s growth in the past decades”.

Arsjad Rasjid, the host of B20 Indonesia and chairman of the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said Indonesia is proud to welcome Xi to Bali for the G20 Summit.

“As we approach the Asian century, I believe that Indonesia, China and everyone around us will begin to see the world from a new perspective,” Rasjid said on Monday. “We will shift from a world driven by profit to a world driven by the need to create common prosperity.”