Thawing of China-US relations

The highly anticipated summit between President Xi Jinping and President Joe Biden adjacent to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in San Francisco last week was focused on repairing their fraught bilateral ties but is largely expected to have “significant global consequences”. The meeting came at the lowest point in their 50-year-old relations and is, therefore, being seen as a breakthrough in itself. “The meeting identified the direction and drew up a blueprint for the sound, steady and sustained development of bilateral ties,” China’s foreign ministry said as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva termed it a badly needed signal that the world needs to cooperate more. “It sends a signal to the rest of the world that we must find ways to cooperate on those challenges where no country on its own can succeed,” she told Reuters. The two leaders, who met for four hours, discussed a wide range of issues from personal and military-to-military communications to economic issues to artificial intelligence to the opioid epidemic in Taiwan and the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East.