Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who is also a member of the Political Bureau of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee, is in Washington. He told the media in a brief interaction that there were “disagreements and differences” between China and the United States, but they also shared “common interests and common challenges.”

Therefore, a dialogue between the two is necessary. He also said that he is in Washington to reciprocate US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s visit to Beijing in the June.

Wang said that China and the US should not resume dialogue but they should be in-depth and comprehensive talks, to reduce “misunderstandings and misjudgments” and to increase mutual understanding.

It is after US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping’s bilateral meeting at Bali on the sidelines of the G20 summit meeting in November, 2022 that it was decided to maintain high level communication channels between the two countries.

Blinken, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen visited Beijing earlier in the year. The two countries continue to spar with each other, and most of the time they find themselves on opposite sides of an issue, especially about Russia and the Ukrainian war.

Beijing has also been a quite supporter of Iran even as US battles Iran’s government. China has been increasing pressure on Taiwan through military exercises in South China Sea, and Beijing is building up its military presence in South China Sea with recent clashes with the Philippines.

Biden has been building influence groups like the Quad comprising Australia, Japan, India and the US, which is ostensibly a group of democratic countries, but its intention is to counter China in the Indo-Pacific.

 Similarly, the defence collaboration of Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States is again an undeclared formation to counter Chinese military presence in the Indo-Pacific.

 At the G20 summit meeting held in New Delhi in September, Biden launched the India-Middle-East-Europe-Economic Corridor (IMEEC), which again is an indirect counter to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

Biden has also been putting in place systems and policies to deny the high tech technology in semi-conductor manufacturing and in the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI). China on its part has been on the look out for alternative ways to boost its semi-conductor industry and AI development.

The United States and China which are the two top economies in the world are dueling each other in every sphere.

But both Biden and Xi realise that there is a compelling need to keep the communication channels between the two open. Most countries are not willing to take sides in the US-China rivalry, and this is especially so with ASEAN members. So the world is not polarised as it appeared to be at the height of the old Cold War between then Soviet Union and the United States.

The Soviet Union after the Russian Revolution of 1917 was suspected of expanding its military footprint especially east Europe, in Africa and parts of Asia.

The Soviet Union was the torchbearer of the communism in the world though many countries broke away from Moscow, including Mao Zedong, then Yugoslavia’s Jospeh Broz Tito.

But China, unlike the Soviet Union, is not a committed communist country. Under Deng Xiaoping, it embraced capitalism and the market economy.

It is because of the economic reforms that China has become an economic powerhouse. And what it wants to do is to extend it footprint through its newfound economic strength. So, the US and China are competing with each other in using their economic strength in the form of aid to developing countries to be the new age superpowers.