Will Xis final summit with Biden ease US-China anxiety before next Trump presidency?

A sit-down between Chinese President Xi Jinping and his outgoing US counterpart Joe Biden is widely anticipated to take place on the sidelines of multilateral talks in South America this week.

Overshadowed by the re-election of former president Donald Trump, it would be the pair’s third and most likely final face-to-face before Biden steps down in January, a meeting that, according to pundits, will help manage and stabilise frosty US-China ties during the transition period.

The fact that Xi was willing to meet a lame-duck US president from a defeated party during the transition was telling in that despite the cold war-style confrontation, Beijing desires steady bilateral ties amid spiralling domestic and external challenges.

The meeting could help ease concerns about the US-China feud, according to Philippe Le Corre, a senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Centre for China Analysis.

“In Beijing, expectations for changes under … a president Trump are minimal,” he said, adding however that “it is essential that the two leaders meet regularly and the Biden administration wants to show that its efforts of the past few years haven’t been useless”.