YUMC - Biden Prepares To Meet Xi Jinping In San Francisco: Semiconductors Taiwan More Critical Issues To Watch | Benzinga
On Wednesday, President Joe Biden will meet his Chinese counterpart President Xi Jinping in what's building up to be the highest-stake diplomatic encounter of the year.
After years of hostile economic rivalry and mounting military tensions, the meeting will set the tone for the relationship between the two countries for the final year of Biden's term, and possibly into the future if the Democrats win the 2024 presidential election.
The U.S. and China are, respectively, the first and second largest economies on the globe and, in the past decade, the natural antagonism stemming from that relationship has transformed into a state of tensions that many within the political classes of both countries would rather avoid.
While tensions have been on the rise, the two countries need each other more than they're comfortable admitting. Last month National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan wrote in Foreign Affairs that the two countries are "economically interdependent."
Recent history in U.S,-China relations is plagued with periods of confrontation which systematically intensify and relax.
A trade war between 2018 and 2020 put the two countries in check. The Trump administration ended on a note of discontent with its efforts to reach a stable balance for the role of the two countries in the global sphere, with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo stating that the era of cooperation between the U.S. government and the Chinese Communist Party was over.
Since Biden began his term in 2021, the relationship with China deteriorated over several key issues. China's increasingly belligerent rhetoric over its claim on Taiwan ...