There is no doubt that President Xi Jinping and President Barack Obama, or any top Chinese and U.S. leaders, should hold summit meetings more often. [Special coverage]
The reason is quite simple. Such summits have the potential to change the dynamic of China-U.S. relations for the better, as has been proved by the three summits between Xi and Obama.
The two leaders met in June 2013 in the California desert retreat of Sunnylands, in November 2014 in Yingtai, an imperial palace in Beijing's Zhongnanhai, the headquarter of China's central government, and last week in Blair House, across the street from the White House.
The shirt-sleeves summit in Sunnylands, which was held a few months after Xi became Chinese president and less than five months after Obama assumed his second term, turned out to be a good opportunity for the two leaders to get to know each other better and build a closer personal relationship. With a private dinner and formal group meetings, the two leaders met for more than eight hours, unlike the 30-minute chats they usually had on the sidelines of multilateral events.
Ben Rhodes, Obama's deputy national security advisor for strategic communication, recently cited Obama as saying the private dinners at the summits have been the most constructive part, because he and Xi didn't have to go through the long list of items on formal agendas and state their country's stance, as happens in formal meetings. Instead they could conduct in-depth talks about where they wanted to take their country and offer a vision of how the U.S. and China might work together.
Rhodes attributed the historic climate agreement announced in Beijing last November during Obama's trip to Beijing as an outcome of the two leaders' informal conversations in the relaxed setting of Sunnylands.
Chinese Ambassador to the U.S. Cui Tiankai offered a similar sentiment on Tuesday when he said of Xi's private dinner with Obama in Washington on Sept 24: "The topics they discussed were strategic, yet the atmosphere was so relaxed, sincere and constructive."
There were low expectations before Xi's state visit this time. But the tone after the summit has been overwhelmingly positive after Xi candidly addressed all the U.S. concerns about a rising China. Even some long-time critics of the Obama administration or the Chinese government have spoken positively of the summit, of Xi's speech in Seattle and the agreements reached, especially the ones on cybersecurity and climate change.
It is true that a summit between the leaders of the two countries is unlikely to resolve all the differences between the two sides once and for all. But the two leaders will have much better mutual understanding through such summits and will be able to chart a course for the relationship by setting a positive tone for their bureaucracies.
In this summit, the tone has been about cooperation and working together to tackle bilateral, regional and global challenges. The tone has been that major global and regional issues cannot be solved without China and the U.S. working together. This latest summit has been a clear demonstration that the two big countries are seeking to work together better.
At least for the time being, the bilateral relationship has been halted from the risk of sliding any further, a huge achievement compared with the pre-summit sentiment.
There is no reason why Xi and Obama, or any top Chinese and U.S. leader in the future, should not meet more often.
The author, Chen Weihua, is deputy editor of China Daily USA.
