When Joe Biden And the Xi Jinping I got to know each other for the first time over 10 years ago, the US and China have been close for three decades despite their differences.
Biden said in 2011 when, as Vice President, he visited Beijing to build a personal relationship with the then Chinese leader. .
Sitting next to Xi in a Beijing hotel, Biden told a room of Chinese and US business leaders about his “high optimism about the next 30 years” of bilateral relations, praising Xi for being “straightforward”.
“Only friends and foes can serve one another by being open and honest with them,” he said.
During this acquaintance trip to China in 2011, the two leaders participated in a marathon of meetings and meals in Beijing and the southwestern city of Chengdu. They also took a trip deep into the green mountains of Sichuan Province to visit a rural high school reconstructed after a deadly earthquake.
The following year, Xi paid a reciprocal visit to the United States at the invitation of Biden, who hosted his Chinese counterpart for dinner at his residence after a series of meetings at the White House, State Department and the Pentagon. Biden also traveled to Los Angeles to meet Xi on the last leg of his trip.
Ongoing relationship: Their personal encounters continued after Xi took power in 2012 — Biden claimed that as vice president, he spent 70 hours north with Xi and traveled with him 17,000 miles across China and the United States — both exaggerations, but still reflect a relationship that is now perhaps the most important on the planet.
The last time they met face to face was in 2015, during Xi’s first state visit to the United States as China’s top leader, while Biden was still vice president.
Transforming Relationships: But as relations between the two countries deteriorated, the friendly dynamics between the two leaders also changed.
Xi is an ideological hardliner who believes in China’s return to the center of the world stage and is skeptical – some might say hostile – toward America. Meanwhile, Biden is increasingly fed up The authoritarian transformation of China under XiThe competition between the two countries is framed as a battle between absolute rule and democracy.
Last summer, Biden publicly dismissed him as an “old friend” of Xi.
“Let’s get something straight. We know each other very well. We’re not old friends. He said at the time that it was just purely business.”
Read more about Biden’s relationship over here.
