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A still from the virtual meeting of US President Joe Biden (left) and Chinese President Xi Jinping. (still from Xinhua News Agency)

The US-China summit held on Tuesday morning turned out just as many had feared.

Neither US President Joe Biden nor Chinese President Xi Jinping showed any signs of budging on key issues such as Taiwan. The two leaders traded the same remarks as before toward one another, and the lengthy, 194-minute conversation ended without any kind of joint statement.

During the summit, Biden and Xi agreed in principle on the importance of restoring the two sides’ relationship and preventing it from souring further.

Reports by China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency and other sources quoted Xi as stressing that a “sound and stable” US-China relationship was necessary for “finding effective responses to global challenges such as climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Biden was quoted as noting the “the need for common-sense guardrails to ensure that competition does not veer into conflict and to keep lines of communication open.”

But when it came to the particulars, the differences in attitude were in full view.

Xi named three main principles for the two sides’ relationship: “mutual respect,” “peaceful coexistence,” and “win-win cooperation.” He also stressed the need for each side to respect the other’s social systems, development pathways, key interests and major areas of attention.

Xi emphasized the need to adopt an approach based on mutual benefits rather than a zero-sum game where a victory for one side translates into a loss from the other. His remarks clearly reflected attitudes in China that see the US as trying to stymie China’s development in a move to preserve its own dominance.

In contrast, Biden emphasized the “complex nature” of relations between the two sides and the “importance of managing competition responsibly.” He welcomed the summit as an “opportunity to speak candidly and straightforwardly to President Xi about [the US’] intentions and priorities across a range of issues.”

He also “underscored that the United States will continue to stand up for its interests and values and, together with our allies and partners, ensure the rules of the road for the 21st century advance an international system that is free, open, and fair,” a White House readout of the meeting stated.

Under predecessor Donald Trump’s administration, the US made similar references to “freedom,” “openness,” and “fairness” when criticizing Beijing.

The difference in their attitudes was also evident in how they view democracy. Xi was reported to have said, “Democracy is not mass produced with a uniform model or configuration for countries around the world. Whether a country is democratic or not should be left to its own people to decide. Dismissing forms of democracy that are different from one’s own is in itself undemocratic.”

“China is ready to have dialogues on human rights on the basis of mutual respect, but we oppose using human rights to meddle in other countries’ internal affairs,” Xi said, according to a report from Xinhua News Agency.

China Central Television stated that President Biden had reiterated that he has no intention of changing the Chinese system. But a readout from the summit provided by the White House only states that “President Biden raised concerns about the PRC’s practices in Xinjiang, Tibet, and Hong Kong, as well as human rights more broadly.”

A senior official at the White House said that human rights issues came up several times and that Biden had exhibited a clear and candid attitude. The official added that Biden had raised concerns about China’s attempts to change the rules in ways that contravene international norms. The two leaders also traded strong words about the key issue of Taiwan but only reconfirmed their current stance.

In the end, Biden and Xi only managed to rehash discussions that have already taken place since Biden became president, such as those during the high-level strategic dialogue in Anchorage in March, the meeting between US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman and Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Xie Feng (the official in charge of managing relations with the US) in Tianjin in July, a meeting between the countries’ respective national security policy advisors Jake Sullivan and Yang Jiechi in Zurich in October, phone calls between US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in August and November, and Blinken and Wang’s meeting in Rome in October.

Since the two countries couldn’t even get traction in the ultimate diplomatic forum of a summit, the gulf between the “US redux” and “China changed” is likely to grow even wider.

By Jung In-hwan, Beijing correspondent; Hwang Joon-bum, Washington correspondent

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]