This article first appeared in Forum, The Edge Malaysia Weekly on December 11, 2023 - December 17, 2023

The Sino-US relationship has all the makings of being the most important bilateral dyad in the world. How the US builds up a strong relationship with China will matter, not only between the two behemoths but the rest of the world, especially Asia-Pacific.

Irrespective of how US President Joe Biden and China’s President Xi Jin Ping were able to paper over the two countries’ testy relationship at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit in San Francisco last month, there are hyper competitive issues already built into the relationship that will pitch the Bald Eagle and the Dragon at every turn of events.

Take the onset of the Taiwan presidential election, whose results will emerge on Jan 13, 2024, for example.

Current polls in Taiwan continue to point to the likelihood of a pro-independence candidate winning the presidency in that island republic as early as mid-next month.

If this result comes to be, with the pro-independence elements in Taiwan thumbing their nose at China, the cordial meeting between Biden and Xi could easily be eviscerated, too. Why?

The US Congress has a view of China that can be broadly classified as hostile to China, whether in the Democratic or the Republican Party.

It was only in August 2022 that China was seething with Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan. She was the then Speaker of the House in the US Congress. This, despite the warning by China that such a trip would be considered a strong, albeit illegal, endorsement by the US to encourage Taiwan to be a “break away” entity of China.

Be that as it may, China’s numerous warnings on Taiwan were never heeded by Washington DC.

Indeed, ever since former secretary of state Henry Kissinger’s secret meetings with Premier Zhou Enlai in 1971 — which paved the way for President Richard Nixon’s trip to China, thus brokering the thaw in the two giants’ frosty relationship — foremost in the view of the Chinese leadership in Beijing has, time and again, been the issue of Taiwan.

In fact, prior to his death on Nov 29 this year, at the ripe old age of 100, Kissinger had been at pains to explain to all the leaders in the White House that the Sino-US relationship matters most deeply. The crux of it is Taiwan.

Still, warning after warning by China to the US on Taiwan’s status as part of the mainland have been ignored time and again, leading Beijing to believe that the US and its security allies are out to protect and coddle Taiwan at all costs.

As things stand, China has had 2,000 missiles aimed at Taiwan to prevent it from ever assuming that Taipei’s political leadership can peel Taiwan away from China at any stage. In fact, Kissinger’s last trip abroad was to China in July 2023.

While no one knows what the message from Xi to the Biden administration was, The New York Times explained that upon Kissinger’s quick return from China, he had found it proper to immediately brief the top US decision-makers. Among others, without fail, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken; Jake Sullivan the national security adviser; and William Burns, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

In turn, the trio proceeded to elucidate their views to Biden for an ultimate assessment on how to receive Xi at the APEC Summit.

Yet, even at the APEC Summit, while Biden and Xi showcased their ability to get along warmly, it nearly became a train wreck. How? In Biden’s remarks to the international press corp on the last day of the APEC Summit, the former referred to Xi in the most undiplomatic manner: that Xi was “a dictator”.

Although this was not the first time Biden has been known to make unsavoury remarks about other leaders, occasionally by calling some a “thug”, which again is an offensive term, the fact of the matter is Biden is prone to serious gaffes.

After all, “loose lips do sink a thousand ships”, averred one ancient proverb; incidentally a phrase that is cognisant to the people in the US and China.

With top-level, face-to-face meetings getting ever harder to come by with each passing day, as the world order is put under great stress, it serves Sino-US relationship no good, especially with the world still reeling from the pandemic, to be made more vulnerable to cantankerous caricature of one leader versus the other.

First and foremost, the Sino-US relationship is adrift. Washington DC is not happy with the Treaty of Unlimited Cooperation signed by China and Russia on Feb 3, 2022.

Second, the US Department of Commerce is ever suspicious of some Chinese firms trying to help Russia to overcome its numerous sanctions; the latter as a result of President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb 24, 2022.

Third, after a lapse of some seven years (2016-2023), a period that saw no high-end Track 1.5 Dialogue, progress had just been made on the sidelines of the APEC Summit to begin serious economic and security dialogues.

Fourth, the likes of the US Department of State and the Department of Defense had separately referred to China as a “strategic competitor” or “strategic threat” over the last seven years. Meanwhile, the Pentagon had referred to China as a “pacing competitor”.

Yet as the late Mentor Minister Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore had once said: “If you do not want an enemy, do not name one.”

As things are, China and the US are caught in a vise-like grip. On land, at sea, in space and, for that matter, in cyberspace, China and the US cannot seem to see eye to eye on many issues.

They range from trade conflicts; tariff barriers; technological rivalries; theatre missiles defence; terminal high-altitude air defence; and tactical conduct in the East and South China Sea; if not the maritime choking points leading to the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea and 14 other Pacific Islands too.

China and the US must learn how to co-exist, without which world trade will be negatively impacted, just as their own bilateral relationship would.

Dr Phar Kim Beng is the senior advisor to the Bluebridge Education Group at the University of Cambridge, England, and the CEO of the Strategic Pan Indo Pacific Arena, Malaysia and London. He is formerly the director of Political and Security Community at the Asean Secretariat.

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