Biden and Xi reach agreement on fentanyl

Presidents of the United States Joe Biden and China, Xi Jinping, They showed some rapprochement on Wednesday at a meeting aimed at stabilizing tumultuous bilateral relations, where they reached agreements on combating the fentanyl trade and reopening military communications channels.

The face-to-face meeting lasted more than four hours, and took place in the country villa “Filoli”, located about 40 kilometers from San Francisco and known as one of the locations of the “Dynasty” series.

The meeting started with the two leaders smilingly posing in front of the television cameras while giving gifts shaking hands and attending to journalists. The two ended with a walk through the mansion’s gardens, which spread over six hectares and were inspired by the English Renaissance.

Everything was calculated down to the millimeter in order to stabilize bilateral relations and make a show of harmony in front of the world, so much so that even Biden took the opportunity to wish the Chinese president’s wife a happy birthday. Peng Liyuanand who shares the date of birth with the American.

Namely, as a senior American official explained to journalists, Biden asked Xi to congratulate his wife, and he replied that he was “uncomfortable” because he had been working so much that he forgot. Next week was his birthday.

But despite his best efforts to show a rapprochement, the meeting didn’t end so well: As he left, Biden ended up telling reporters that he still thought Xi was a “dictator,” an adjective that had already alienated them when they first met him. June this year.

Apart from the gesture of complicity, the two powers made it clear that the aim of the meeting was to re-establish lines of communication so that an arbitrary incident does not lead to a crisis with unforeseeable consequences.

“We agreed that the lines of communication will remain open, including between President Xi and myself. We both agreed that each of us would be able to pick up the phone, call directly and hear from each other immediately,” Biden explained at a press conference after the meeting.

In this sense, one of the great successes of the meeting was the re-establishment of communication between the armed forces of the two countrieswhich fell apart more than a year ago after a controversial August 2022 visit to Taiwan by then-Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi.

In particular, the two countries reached an agreement on meetings between their defense ministers, exchange of information between military leaders of different branches of the Armed Forces and, finally, on communication between their navies, the two sides said after the meeting.

Cooperation against fentanyl trafficking
Another achievement of the meeting between Biden and XI was the agreement for China control the departure from your territory of chemicals used by Mexican drug cartels used to manufacture fentanyl and sell it illegally in the United States, the White House announced.

In its official statement, the Chinese government did not specifically say that a deal had been reached on fentanyl, but indicated that an agreement had been reached to create a “task force” on narcotics.

One of the requests that Beijing has been making to Washington for months is the lifting of sanctions that burden the Institute of Forensic Sciences of the Ministry of Public Security of China, which is responsible for conducting criminal investigations, including in the field of narcotics. , so that he could cooperate in the fight against fentanyl.

However, there was no announcement on Wednesday about the Chinese order.

Taiwan, at the center of tension
What was again visible during the meeting were the tensions between the two powers over Taiwan, a self-governing island with a democratic system that China considers part of its territory and to which Washington sends a large amount of weapons.

Xi also said Taiwan remains the “most important and sensitive” issue in the relationship and directly called on Biden to take “real action” to honor his commitment not to support Taiwan independence.

Furthermore, he claimed that stop sending weapons to the island and support the “peaceful reunification” of China. “China will achieve reunification and it is inevitable,” Xi stressed during the meeting, according to an official Chinese summary of the meeting.

For his part, Biden asked Xi to respect the independence of January’s presidential election in Taiwan and not tip the balance in favor of the conservative Kuomintang candidate, Hou Yu-ih, who is closer to Beijing.

In these elections, the Taiwanese vice president starts as the favorite, William Lai, which belongs to the Democratic Progressive Party, the political force of current President Tsai Ing-wen, under which relations with Beijing have been further strained.