Biden-Xi meeting: It looks like Biden was weak and willing to let China dictate terms on Taiwan

We don’t really have a read out of the Biden-Xi virtual teleconference.  On the Taiwan issue, the White House claims that Biden reiterated the US stance.  However according to the BBC “China’s state-run Global Times said Mr Xi blamed recent tensions on ‘repeated attempts by the Taiwan authorities to look for US support for their independence agenda as well as the intention of some Americans to use Taiwan to contain China.'”  Xi allegedly told Biden “”Such moves are extremely dangerous, just like playing with fire. Whoever plays with fire will get burnt.”

From what can be gleaned reading between the lines, Biden did not complain to Xi about China’s aggressive actions over Taiwan including massing fighter planes and bombers circling the island, troop exercises practicing invasion tactics, or even China’s mock up of a US carrier where China is learning how to destroy it.

In fact, it was Xi making the accusations and Biden saying very little in reply.

Thus while “officially” both leaders talked about better future cooperation, the fact remains that the US took another step back away from Taiwan, thereby weakening deterrence and allowing the Chinese to dictate the terms of the encounter.

This was reinforced by the Global Times headline claiming that the virtual meeting “injected certainty” into the US-China relationship. Perhaps the best way to read this is that the Chinese think they have nothing to worry about from the United States stopping them from invading Taiwan.

In short, Biden comes off as weak and quite willing to trade off Taiwan for other things, like progress on climate change. For sure it is China that is calling all the shots.