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US President Joe Biden stands in the back row, center, next to Thailand's Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra, left, and Vietnam's President Luong Cuong, right, above Indonesia's President Prabowo Subianto, bottom left, South Korea's President Yoon Suk Yeol, bottom center, and Malaysia's Prime Minster Anwar Ibrahim, bottom right, as they pose with other APEC leaders for a family photograph at the APEC Summit in Lima, Peru on Nov 16, 2024. Photo: Manuel Balce Ceneta (AP).
Outgoing US President Joe Biden was unable to score a diplomatic breakthrough of any kind last week during his appearance at the annual APEC Summit in Peru.
The meeting between Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping was pure formality, argues Jeff J. Brown, author of “The China Trilogy” and founder of Seek Truth From Facts Foundation.
“The Chinese know that Biden is the quintessential lame duck. Being very Confucist and wanting to respect protocol, position and tradition, they met. But that is about all,” Brown says.
According to him, what Xi told Biden during the meeting basically amounted to reiterating what the former previously told Donald Trump by phone earlier this month: “cooperation is mutually beneficial for both sides; as two leading world powers, humanity depends on us to do the right thing, and trying to limit China’s progress and development is bound to fail.”
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That said, Brown speculates that China is unlikely to let its guard down as Trump’s approach to Sino-American relations may not be that different from Biden’s.
“Uncle Sam has never honored a treaty unless the terms benefit it. Trump is more “in your face” than Biden, thus more transparent, but the results will be the same: Beijing will know what is being done to attack them,” he remarks.
Brown also suggests that the way Biden was treated by the hosts of the summit, i.e. not getting a red carpet reception upon arrival and being sidelined in the summit’s annual family photo, was “just one more backhanded slap in face to Western empire.”
“The rest of the human race is holding out great hopes that APEC, BRICS, African Union, CELAC and other multipolar groupings can usher in a fair, peaceful and win-win world order,” he says.
(Sputnik)
