Development of China-US ties tempered by hope, pragmatism
China DailyChinese and the United States students perform at the opening ceremony of the 14th China-US Tourism Leadership Summit in Xi'an, Shaanxi province, in May. The China-US relationship, after going through ups and downs over the past four years, has remained "stable on the whole", President Xi Jinping told US President Joe Biden in Lima, Peru, on Nov 16, a year after they met in San Francisco, where they both stated a willingness to achieve a relaxation of tensions. At the Lima summit, Biden reiterated his government's stance that it does not support "Taiwan independence", its alliances are not targeted at China, and it does not seek conflict with China. Biden's top diplomat, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, said on Dec 18 that China's "complaining" about Washington's efforts to "bring these other countries into some kind of alliance against China… is the most powerful evidence of the success that we've had". On the economic front, the outgoing Biden administration this month alone decided to raise tariffs on solar wafers, polysilicon and some tungsten products from China, and, in the third round of sweeping technology restrictions in three years on Chinese companies, it placed nearly 140 more on its Entity List for national security concerns, a move that China said overstretches the national security concept.