The setting matters too. The meeting between the presidents of the United States and China, Joe Biden and Xi Jinping, was held at the Filoli mansion, in the San Francisco area, a luxury venue erected in the gold rush era in which the Hollywood music.
Although today this site is visitable, and titans of Silicon Valley celebrate their weddings, this historic residence was closed firmly on Wednesday. A huge security cordon prevented Xi from even getting close so he could neither see nor hear the critical protesters.
But its rooms are well known to citizens from all over the world. This house was used as a set in the series Dynasty, popular in the 1980s. It was a global success that played with appearances and backstabbing.
This contradictory duality marked the meeting of the leaders of the two great economic and military powers.
The face to face meeting, the first in a year, served to show a friendly face and try to stabilize a relationship that had deteriorated in recent months due to the downing of spy balloons flying over North America, the tension in Taiwan, the numerous interceptions of American planes in international space or the confrontation in the disputed waters of the Philippines and the China Sea.
In the end, modest agreements were announced that do not hide the disagreement between the two great world powers. Their interests travel on roads in the opposite direction.
An expert in China defined the context with a colorful saying: “Both sides admitted that they cannot urinate in the same container, but they promised not to urinate in each other.” In a more diplomatic way, Xi launched a phrase that has had an echo. “Planet Earth is big enough for the success of both countries,” he said.
There are those in the United States who doubt this statement, as well as other promises that the Chinese leader has left unfulfilled in his road map. There was an agreement to recover the channels between the military. On other occasions this was a dead letter for Xi. The same occurs with the pact to combat the invasion of fentanyl in the United States by cutting Chinese exports of chemicals, especially to Mexico, to make that poison. There were those who remembered that this is not the first time that something similar has been announced.
It was clear that they did not have much harmony, or less than they tried to pretend in public. In the end there was no joint statement or shared appearance before the press.
Their destinies in the Californian night diverged.
Biden appeared before the press to describe the meeting as one of “the most constructive and productive”, in which “important progress” had been made to stabilize relations between the two roosters.
In his role as host, he reiterated that the two of them have known each other for more than a decade. Although he did not talk about friendship, he stressed that both value their conversation as a piece to avoid dangerous mistakes.
It was upon leaving the room that Biden dug the dividing ditch. A journalist asked him if he still thinks that Xi is a dictator, as she defined him a few months ago, infuriating the Chinese Executive. "Yes it is. “He is someone who governs a country that is a communist country,” she clarified.
Aside from fentanyl or climate change, none of the issues that really confront them were addressed. During the conversation, Xi insisted on his determination to unify Taiwan with China, without alluding to the potential use of force. And he denounced Washington's “futile efforts” to contain China, but accepted that the technological restrictions imposed by the US. It is penalizing him. He even showed his anger because investment and export controls “cause serious damage to China's legitimate interests.”
While Biden faced the media to show how diplomacy confronts autocrats, Xi went to a dinner, for $2,000 a cover, with the CEOs of large companies from the rival country. There he talked about pandas (he suggested his return to the US), ping pong and, above all, open doors in the Asian giant for his investments. Money does not know about homelands or human rights or dictatorships.
There are those who ironically said that the meeting with Biden was a cover for the business dinner.
