There was an unexpected twist in Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s schedule today during his trip to China. After repeatedly refusing requests for a meeting or even a call, Chinese President Xi Jinping decided to host a brief meeting with Blinken. The stated purpose of the trip was supposedly to “lower the temperature” and lessen tensions between America and China, something that Xi had previously not expressed a lot of interest in. But he’s apparently changed his mind, at least to some degree. Unfortunately, the announcements that were released after the meeting didn’t suggest that any real progress had been made. The most Xi would say is that the two sides “have agreed to follow through on the common understandings President Biden and I reached in Bali.” (NY Post)

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday as he wrapped up a two-day high-stakes visit to Beijing aimed at easing soaring tensions between the countries.

The meeting at the Great Hall of the People had been expected and was seen as key to the success of the trip, but neither side confirmed it would happen until a State Department official announced it just an hour beforehand.

In footage of the meeting released by state broadcaster CCTV, Xi is heard to say “The two sides have agreed to follow through on the common understandings President Biden and I have reached in Bali.”

The majority of summit trips like this are performance art where everything is staged for the cameras. The real work of hammering out agreements is done in the background by diplomats and aides. Today’s events were no different and Xi seemed to be sending a message. This meeting wasn’t even on the official schedule because the Chinese leader had refused to commit to a meeting with Blinken until almost literally the last minute. He then “graciously” agreed to see Blinken briefly, but he was making it clear that the meeting would be on Xi’s terms.

The Wall Street Journal correctly described the recent Sino-American relationship as “months of cold shoulder.” On the first day of Blinken’s visit, the most he managed to accomplish was an agreement with the Chinese Foreign Minister to try to increase the number of commercial air flights between China and the United States. But the WSJ goes on to speculate that Xi Jinping has a few items on his agenda that will require improved relations with America, possibly including a trip to the United States and perhaps even a meeting with Biden.

Behind the scenes, however, Beijing has had its own reasons for detente with the U.S.: Chinese officials have said a priority for Beijing this year is to pave the way for top leader Xi Jinping to attend an annual summit of Asia-Pacific leaders to be held in San Francisco in November—and possibly a separate meeting with President Biden.

Chinese diplomats have been working to ensure the Chinese leader will receive a respectful welcome for what would be his first trip to the U.S. since 2017.

It’s possible that China has been listening to all of the talk from American officials about the need to “decouple” from the Chinese economy and ramp up weapons production in case we wind up going to war with them. Such an outcome would be just as disastrous for China as it would for us, particularly in terms of the balance of trade. So it may be possible that Xi Jinping is seriously considering tabling some of his plans and attempting to restore a productive relationship with America.

But we can’t simply ignore the way that China has been aggressively expanding its military and forging stronger alliances with other adversarial nations, including Russia and Iran. They know that we’ve outsourced so much of the global supply chain to them for so long that the situation can’t be turned around overnight. No sane person actually wants a shooting war with China, but it also seems impossible to simply pretend none of this happened and go back to “the good old days” at this point.