TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — Perhaps just shaking hands and sitting down together can be enough sometimes.
At their four-hour meeting Wednesday, U.S. President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping didn’t resolve any of the vital geopolitical issues dividing the world’s two largest economies and chief rivals for global influence, but they struck a conciliatory tone that came as a relief to other countries, especially China’s neighbors.
The two leaders met at a northern California country estate, holding talks, lunching and taking a garden stroll designed to show that while the two countries are global competitors, they’re not locked in a winner-take-all faceoff.
“Planet Earth is big enough for the two countries to succeed,” Xi told Biden.