What Do US Indo-Pacific Allies Think of the Biden-Xi Summit?
Views from Australia, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, and Taiwan.
By Shannon Tiezzi
November 17, 2023
U.S. President Joe Biden Meets with China’s President President Xi Jinping at the Filoli Estate in Woodside, Calif., Nov, 15, 2023, on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperative conference.
Governments around the world were keeping a close eye on this week’s summit between Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Joe Biden, held on the sidelines of the APEC Economic Leader’s Meeting in San Francisco. In their first in-person meeting since November 2022 – and just their second since Biden assumed office – the two presidents sought to reframe the relationship to avoid escalation and “responsibly” manage competition.
Biden called his four-hour meeting with Xi “some of the most constructive and productive discussions we’ve had.” China’s foreign minister, in a post-summit briefing to the press, hailed the talks as “strategic” and “historic.”
What did the United States’ Indo-Pacific allies think?
While it’s become an adage that China-U.S. bilateral relationship is the most important in the world, few countries have as much directly at stake as Australia, Japan, the Philippines, and South Korea – all U.S. treaty allies dependent on Washington for their security, but closely linked economically with China. Located in the Indo-Pacific region, these countries would bear the brunt of any China-U.S. conflict.
https://thediplomat.com/2023/11/what-do-us-indo-pacific-allies-think-of-the-biden-xi-summit/
