“Save the country from the devastation” by Xi: a message to the rest of the world and to the people around the world

During a congress of China’s ruling elite on Sunday, the hard-line leader of the country presented himself as the one who had saved the nation from the ravages of the pandemic and was now focused on securing China’s rise.

In public, the leader should think about where to lead his country. He should also think about and know how to get along with other countries and the wider world,” could be seen as an acknowledgment of new responsibility with China now a major world power. They could also be seen as the kind of lecture that Washington delivered to Chinese leaders back in the day in order for them to retaliate against the US.

But his praise was coupled with a somber warning that the nation must stand united behind the party to cope with a world he depicted as increasingly turbulent — and hostile. And though he did not mention the United States by name, his distrust of the world’s other great power was an unmistakable backdrop to that exhortation.

Mr. Xi said to be aware of dangers during peace. Prepare for the big tests of high winds, waves, and even dangerous sea conditions, by getting the house in good repair before rain comes.

A trip to China for a third time: German chancellor’s first visit since the invasion of Ukraine and a new friendship with Moscow

Germany’s chancellor is on a trip to Beijing on Friday. Since the 20th Chinese Communists Party Congress delivered the Chinese leader a third term as party secretary, he has met only one head of state. Scholz’s visit is also the first to China by a European leader since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has strained ties between Western European countries and Beijing.

The US statement that China and the US had agreed that a nuclear war could never be won was important, because it reminded them of their opposition to the use of nuclear weapons inUkraine.

In the days leading up to Scholz’s trip, he went against the advice of many advisers and cabinet ministers to approve a 24.9% stake in the port of Hamburg by Chinese state-run shipping giant COSCO, a move that 69% of Germans polled by Deutschland Trend called a “wrong move.” The United States voiced their concerns about the deal.

Immediately following his meeting with Xi, Scholz appeared in a press conference with Li, the outgoing Chinese premier. The United Nations has a long history of protecting the rights of ethnic minorities and so calling for those protections right now is not interference in China’s internal affairs.

The world can’t afford another escalation in Ukraine according to Li. He also said that China remains an attractive place for investment and both China and Germany support multipolar solutions to international problems.

Both Biden and Xi said in their remarks that they were looking for ways to coexist. The two spent lots of time together when they were both vice presidents more than a decade ago — and both men referenced their lengthy relationship in warm greetings before the talks began.

On Monday, the two leaders are set to meet each other for another honest exchange in Bali, Indonesia, on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit. The room’s mood is not likely to match the surrounding area’s.

The Democrats were projected to keep the Senate in a major victory after their better-than-expected performance in the US mid-term elections. Asked Sunday whether the results allowed him to go into Monday’s face-to-face with a stronger hand, Biden voiced confidence. “I know I’m coming in stronger,” he told reporters.

The new friendship with Moscow that happened before the invasion of Ukraine made alarm in the West. And as top US and Russian officials met in Turkey on Monday, partly about the nuclear issue, the signals coming out of the Xi-Biden talks could be an important indication of restraint from Beijing to Moscow and a diplomatic win for Washington.

Nor is his assessment for climate cooperation any rosier. When it comes to how to deal with climate change, there’s always a rivalry between China and the US, even though both have common interests.

A senior White House official said Thursday Biden wants to use the talks to “build a floor” for the relationship – in other words, to prevent it from free falling into open conflict. A US official said the main objective of the sit- down was not about reaching agreements, but rather getting a better understanding of both leaders’ priorities and reducing misconception.

Jake Sullivan,US national security adviser, told reporters on Air Force One that the meeting was unlikely to result in a major breakthrough in the relationship.

U.S. officials share this relative optimism. The senior administration official told reporters prior to the meeting that the space in the Chinese system had been created because of the leaders’ meeting.

“The Chinese believe the US goal is to keep China down so we can contain it. Scott Kennedy, senior adviser in Chinese Business and Economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said that the US believes that China has a goal to make the world safer for authoritarian states, push the US out of Asia and weaken its alliance system.

Kennedy, who just returned from a weeks long visit to China, said that each side blamed the other for the state of the relationship and they both believed they were faring better than the other.

“The Chinese think they’re winning, the Americans think they’re winning, and so they’re willing to bear these costs. Kennedy said the other side is unlikely to make any significant changes. There are a number of things that reduce the likelihood of significant adjustments.

The fact that the two leaders are having a face-to-face conversation is a positive development. Keeping dialogue open is crucial for reducing risks of misunderstanding and miscalculations, especially when suspicions run deep and tensions run high.

Direct communication is all the more important given Xi has just secured a norm-shattering third term with a tighter grip on power than ever – and a possibility to rule for life. Sullivan said, “There is no one else who can communicate authoritatively other than the president.”

Biden said after the talks that he didn’t find Xi “more confrontational or more conciliatory. I found him the way he’s always been: Direct and straightforward. … We were very blunt with one another about places where we disagreed or where we were uncertain of each other’s position.”

I would love to be a fly on the wall and witness that discussion, because I don’t believe the US or China have been as precise about what their red lines are. And I also don’t think either has been very clear about what positive rewards the other side would reap from staying within those red lines,” said Kennedy, of CSIS.

Biden, meanwhile, reported that he stressed to Xi that Beijing also has an obligation to temper North Korea’s destabilizing missile and nuclear activity that has the Pacific region on edge.

China responded by launching large scale military exercises around Taiwan that formed an effective blockade; it also halted dialogue with the US in a number of areas, from military, climate change and cross-border crime to drug trafficking.

Now the two leaders are sitting down in the same room – a result of weeks of intensive discussions between the two sides – Taiwan is widely expected to top their agenda. But in a sign of the contentiousness of the issue, barbs have already been traded.

Biden publicly told Xi that the US was ready to reengage in climate talks – at an opportune moment for the Egypt climate summit. The White House said the two leaders agreed to empower senior officials to have better communication and deepen efforts to address climate change, macroeconomic stability and health security.

Experts in the US and China say some progress on greater communication and access between the two countries will already be considered a positive outcome – such as restoring suspended climate and military talks.

What was the moment of the election? Listening to Biden, Trone, and Sullivan on the White House Calling in Indonesia, and how they came to know about the outcome

The aide gave a phone to the President after he’d finished having a late-night dinner with Asian leaders.

David Trone was on the other side of the line, a millionaire wine seller who was thousands of miles away in Maryland and had just won another term in the House.

The call was not long, but reflected the enthusiasm that Biden had displayed over the last few days, calling many candidates to encourage them to run.

Biden’s advisers say the election results could have an effect on his position in the first meeting of his first two years, if they had matched historical trends.

US national security adviser Jake Sullivan provided a glimpse into dynamics of the moment, pointing to the fact “that many leaders took note of the results of the midterms, came up to the president to engage him and to say that they were following them closely.”

Sullivan told reporters on Air Force One that the theme over the course of the two days was what the election said about the strength of American democracy.

White House officials, even those who braced for losses in the weeks leading up to election day, have cast aside any reticence to take to their Twitter accounts or to TV interviews to call out pundits and politicians who predicted otherwise.

It is a reflection of a team that feels continually underestimated and has long coveted success after a relentless and crisis-infused first 21 months in office.

White House officials had been circling the G-20 as the likely sit-down with Xi for months. There were intensive preparations between the two sides in the lead up to announcing the engagement publicly. The tenuous state of the relationship necessitated a sit down, regardless of domestic politics.

The election results proved that the American political landscape that served to rattle allies and foes over the last few years is actually working, as the White House mood has only seemed to grow more cheerful with each new day of races.

The potential for a split screen of a president grappling with his party’s political loss at the same time that he would be arriving in Indonesia was aware of by a group of people close to the matter.

One US official said that political standing andception can be related. Even though the election was watched by people around the world, it was never a central focus or driver of the dynamics.

Each of the calls back home underscored the fact that the president was right to enter the meeting with China at a time when US-China relations are inching away from great power competition towards inevitable conflict.

Biden said that the results weren’t needed for the meeting to achieve its goals because of his long-standing relationship with China’s leader, who was their vice president. US officials are also careful not to overstate the effect on a trip – and in a region – where the layers of complexity and challenges far exceed what voters decide in a congressional district or swing state.

Biden has made clear that the leading autocracy in the strategy and policy of the administration is the one in China.

Up until the election day, allies and foes were all left to take Biden at his word that he was going to answer those questions with an emphatic yes.

Donald Trump was still the most powerful figure inside of the Republican Party even though he lied during the election.

Biden was able to cobble together a piece of the domestic agenda on a bipartisan basis. Yet he still held an approval rating in the low 40s, weighed down by four-decade high inflation and a population exhausted by years careening from crisis to crisis.

The possibility that Biden would face the same harsh judgment of his first two years in office as nearly all his recent predecessors wasn’t just likely. It was expected.

As he traveled through bilateral meetings and pulled- asides, Biden’s own political validation served another purpose for his approach on the world stage.

Biden feels like it establishes a strong position for him in the international stage, and I think that plays out in living color today as he departs the Summit, Sullivan told reporters after Biden left. “I think we’ll see that equally when we head into both the G20 and to his bilateral engagements in Bali.”

On the last day in Phnom Penh, Biden held critical meetings with the leaders of Japan and South Korea as well as a meeting with the Australian prime minister, who was focused on China.

Nevada Rep. Dina Titus, who faced a tough reelection battle in a redrawn district, had secured another term in office. Biden needed to convey his joy.

The first face-to-face exchange between the US and China since Biden took office: “It’s a baby step”

According to the US, the Indonesia summit yielded two important outcomes, one of which is the decision to not use a nuclear weapon inUkraine and the other on climate negotiations between the US and China.

Leon Panetta, a former White House chief of staff, defense secretary and CIA chief, said that he was cautiously optimistic after the G20 summit talks with his Chinese counterpart.

Panetta thinks that the meeting will lead to a much needed dialogue on issues that need to be addressed.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry says neither side should try to change or subvert the other’s system.

It has been concluded that part of the reason for engaging China during the 1970s Cold War deep freeze was to open strategic gaps between Beijing and Moscow.

Things aren’t so different now, though the dynamic between the Kremlin and Beijing has reversed, with China the global power and Russia the junior partner.

“Do I believe he’s willing to compromise on certain issues? Yes,” Biden told reporters afterward about his meeting with Xi. “We were very blunt with one another about places where we disagreed.”

Today’s meeting was the first face-to-face exchange between the two since Biden became president. It took place after both leaders had just strengthened their respective political positions at home, analysts say.

Yu Jie, a senior research fellow on China at the London-based think tank Chatham House, says that given Biden’s “reasonable success” in the midterms, he is in a stronger position to steer Washington’s relationship with Beijing.

Climate talks that had been halted in August after Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan, which Beijing claims as its own, are expected to resume later this month. The White House said that leaders agreed to improve communication and deepen efforts.

However, Yu warns that Monday’s meeting is just “a baby step” towards improving relations: “It will not resolve any substantial grievances both sides have had against each other, but only slowing down the deterioration of their relations.”

The Xi-Biden Meeting to Build a Floor: China’s Highest Powerhouses in China and its Cold War

The State Department said that Secretary of State Antony Blinken will also visit China in person sometime early next year to follow up on the Xi-Biden meeting.

The U.S. imposed trade sanctions last month that were designed to hamper the military modernization of China and other critical technology sectors of the country.

“The world is big enough for the two countries to develop themselves and prosper together,” tweeted Hua Chunying, a foreign ministry spokesperson who accompanied Xi in his meeting with Biden.

China has refused to condemn the aggression, instead laying the blame for the conflict on NATO and the US, as it grows increasingly isolated on the world stage.

Last year, China’s foreign minister Wang Yi put out three core demands — “bottom lines” — that China wanted the U.S. to agree to in order for relations to improve: to not get in the way in the country’s development, to respect China’s claims over places like Taiwan and to respect Beijing’s Communist Party rule.

And while Biden came in to the G20 with a stronger position due to the narrow Democratic victory in the battle to control the Senate, he is up for reelection in two years himself.

Analysts think that the meeting could lead to stronger ties between the top economic powerhouses. Stock markets in mainland China and Hong Kong were buoyed as a result, with technology giants such as Alibaba

            (BABA) and Tencent

            (TCEHY) soaring on Tuesday.

China wants a cease fire and a stop to war in the Ukraine, Chinese state media said, as quoted by a bilat from Chinese state media.

Neil Thomas, senior analyst for China and Northeast Asia at Eurasia Group, said the goal of the meeting was to “build a floor” under declining relations between Beijing and Washington.

Ken Cheung, chief Asian foreign exchange strategist at Mizuho Bank, said the meeting was a positive sign that the two sides were keen to find common ground.

Chinese Prime Minister Xi meets the French presidency in a G20 summit to discuss the economic and social status of China after the G20 pandemic

On Tuesday, the Hong Kong’s Hang Seng (HSI) index was up 4% and is headed for a third straight day of gains. The index, boosted by China’s latest policy shift towards a gradual reopening of borders and a sweeping rescue package for the ailing property sector, has soared 14% since last Thursday.

Chinese technology shares, which had been hammered by a regulatory crackdown at home and rising geopolitical tension abroad, led markets higher on Tuesday. In Hong Kong, share prices of bothAlibaba andTemasek went up by 11%.

ING analyst said that this was far more progress than they had expected, and dominated what may otherwise turn out to be a fairly irrelevant G20 summit.

After three years away from the world stage, China’s leader has embarked on a meeting with world leaders in order to reestablish China’s global influence.

In a sign of Xi’s busy schedule, the Chinese leader and French President Emmanuel Macron squeezed in a meeting early on Tuesday, before both leaders showed up at the opening of the G20 summit.

The 43 minutes of talks with the French Presidency saw Xi reiterate his support for a ceasefire and peace talks to end the war in Ukraine.

France has hardened its position on China over the last few years, viewing the country as a competitor and security concern.

For the majority of the pandemic Xi limited his diplomatic activities to virtual summits and video conferences, choosing to stay within China, rather than travel overseas.

Most Australians don’t think there will be a huge difference in relations between the two countries with the meeting between Xi and Albanese.

The two countries have been locked in a bruising trade dispute and diplomatic freeze since early 2020, when China slapped tariffs on Australia following its call for an investigation into the origins of the coronavirus.

Analog of the meeting of Australia’s top diplomat, Edwards Lee, with the World Affairs Report on the “Global Problems of the South China Sea and the South Pacific”

In announcing his meeting with a Chinese man, he pointed to the lack of dialogue at the top level for years and said it was a successful outcome.

He tells reporters that there are no preconditions for the meeting, and that it’s not Australia’s interest not to dialogue with its major trading partners.

John Lee, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute think tank in Washington, Australia and a former national security adviser to the Australian government, said core Chinese objectives such as its South China Sea, Taiwan and South Pacific Policies are fundamentally at odds with Australia’s core interests.

Ghitis was a CNN producer and correspondent and is a world affairs columnist. She is a weekly opinion contributor to CNN, a contributing columnist to The Washington Post and a columnist for World Politics Review. The views expressed in this commentary are her own. CNN has more opinion on it.

The American midterms: a blow to the United States, but a disaster for Vladimir Putin and Vladimir Xi. When Vladimir Zelensky left Russia

Biden said the results of the elections show the US will remain engaged in the world. There was a bigger message, that was what it was. The most important signal to the world from the midterms is about the health of America’s democracy. The US elections went smoothly and Peaceful, but they were also a blow to antidemocratic elements.

As Biden and Xi were meeting, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made an emotional, triumphant return to the devastated, now liberated city of Kherson, the one provincial capital that Russian invaders had conquered.

Back then, on the opening day of the Winter Olympics, Putin and Xi declared the two countries had a friendship with “no limits,” with no “forbidden areas of cooperation.” Russian troops crossed the borders of Ukranian in what they expected to be a quick operation to take over the newly founded democracy next door.

Putin and Xi, the world’s leading autocrats, looked ascendant, unstoppable even. The unrest in Western democracies was due to violent protests against Covid-19 restrictions. Putin was preparing for a victory. The Olympics were about to solidify the control of China, and that’s when Xi was basking in attention.

Biden led a push to support Ukraine as the Ukrainians defended their country with unexpected determination and as Putin was turned into a disaster.

The fact that Putin didn’t attend the G20 summit was telling, as he becomes increasingly despised on the global stage.

Russian President Vladimir Putin meets the epochal adversaries of the Covid-cosmological-war-torsion-resilient regime

Biden is not the only one that has a strong hand. After securing his third term as China’s leader, Xi was able to rule for as long as he wanted. He does not need to worry about elections, the press or the opposition party. He is essentially the absolute ruler of a mighty country for many years to come.

The country is currently fighting its worst-ever Covid outbreak after finally abandoning its stringent zero-Covid policy, with restrictions loosened and borders partially reopened. The U-turn came after an unprecedented wave of protests across the country in opposition to zero-Covid – in some cases expanding to include broader grievances against Xi and the ruling Communist Party.

Being able to show that democracy works and that unprovoked wars of aggression won’t succeed are two of the key aspects of the epochal competition between the two systems.

The Russian president and the Chinese leader are scheduled to speak via video conference, with analysts watching for any signs of change in the Chinese leader’s support for Putin after a long war in Ukraine and a Covid outbreak.

The two leaders will primarily talk about bilateral relations between their countries and other issues like regional issues, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

But more than 10 months into the grinding war, the world looks much different – and the dynamic between both partners has shifted accordingly, experts say.

The invasion failed with setbacks, including a lack of basic equipment. The citizens of Russia are faced with economic hardship during the bitter winter.

On Thursday, Russia launched what Ukrainian officials described as one of the biggest missile barrages since the war began in February, with explosions rattling villages and cities across Ukraine, damaging civilian infrastructure and killing at least three people.

Ukrainian officials have been warning for a week that Russia is planning to bomb the power grid and plunge the country into darkness in two years as Ukrainians try to ring in the New Year and celebrate the Christmas holidays.

The Importance of Correlations in China’s Cold War with the United States: A View from the Stimson Center’s Sun

China, too, is growing more isolated in its stance toward Russia, said Alfred Wu, associate professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore.

In September Modi spoke to Putin and told him that peace was the way to go and that now wasn’t the right time for war.

The Stimson Center’s Sun said that with domestic issues out of the way, Xi is in a better position to work on Russia.

She said that the trade between the two countries had increased this year due to high energy prices in other parts of the world.

However, Wu said, the protests, Covid outbreak and consequent economic toll have placed Xi in a more vulnerable position that could mean less material and public support for Russia.