beyondbrics

If this week’s China visit of US vice-president Joe Biden is to produce anything beyond ceremony, Washington will want it to be a message of reassurance for its biggest creditor of America’s economic strength.

At such times, form can be as important as substance. So, it was embarrassing for all concerned that the vice-president’s carefully-choreographed Thursday meeting with Xi Jinping, his Chinese counterpart and heir apparent for Beijing’s top job, got off to an awkward start.

Biden started with pleasantries such as expressing his admiration for Xi’s “openness and candour” at an earlier encounter.

But just as he started talking about the economy, Chinese security staff and foreign ministry handlers started pushing media out of the room, drowning Biden’s voice out with calls of “it’s over, it’s over, let’s go”.

The vice-president’s main message, later recovered from recordings, was this:”I am absolutely confident that the economic stability of the world depends on no small part on cooperation between the US and China.”

Judging from this performance, the two have a way to go. When White House and US embassy staff sided with journalists in defying the order to leave, they were pushed and shoved just as hard as the reporters, accompanied by hissses from Chinese foreign ministry officials:”Why is he talking for so long?”

Biden’s four-day visit is the first top-level US-China official meeting since the latest bout of international market turmoil, which was sparked in part by concerns about Standard and Poor’s downgrade of American public debt.

Beijing seeks assurances from Biden that its huge US dollar asset holdings are secure, according to Chinese media. “U.S. desperate for vote of confidence from China,” said the headline of a story about Biden’s visit in the Global Times, a Chinese tabloid, Reuters reported.

With so many people watching, it is not helpful that the stage-management of the trip got into such a tangle.