The Vaporware SummitColumn: President Biden rewards a hostile ChinaMatthew Continetti • November 19, 2021 5:00 amAnd you think your Zoom calls are important. On the evening of November 15, President Biden spoke over video for three and a half hours with China's autocrat Xi Jinping. The "virtual summit" was held online because Xi hasn't left China since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic two years ago. According to official readouts of the conversation, Biden and Xi talked to one another warmly. They covered a lot of ground—everything from ICBMs to global energy supplies. They took the first steps toward improved relations between the United States and the People's Republic of China (PRC). Global media amplified this official message. "The Biden-Xi Summit Was Actually Kind of a Big Deal," read one headline in Slate.
Don't believe it. Biden's tête-à-tête with Xi Jinping was less constructive and more harmful than his in-person visit with Russia's Vladimir Putin in June. At least Biden got something, however insignificant, from that earlier encounter with authoritarianism. The United States and the Russian Federation issued a brief joint statement on nuclear "strategic stability." They established a "Strategic Stability Dialogue" that would "lay the groundwork for future arms control and risk reduction measures." The dialogue began in September. Will it go anywhere? Probably not. But the mind-numbing diplomatic process has started. And it involves real people, meeting in real five-star hotels, in real European cities.
That's not the case with China. The only thing Xi gave Biden was a pledge to make a pledge sometime in the future. The virtual summit was vaporware—the promise of a possible conversation that doesn't yet exist and most likely never will. At a Brookings Institution event on November 16, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said the two heads of state decided to "look to begin to carry forward discussion on strategic stability." Try saying that diplomatic tongue-twister three times fast. It's the equivalent of a contestant on The Bachelor gushing, "I think I'm maybe beginning to fall in love with you." I translate Sullivan's gobbledygook this way: Xi and Biden had a conversation about having a conversation about China's rising stockpile of nuclear warheads and the threat it poses to global security and nonproliferation. Nothing more.
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https://freebeacon.com/columns/the-vaporware-summit/
