President Biden, the subject of an impeachment inquiry examining his involvement in his family’s hugely profitable business deals with China, will face President Xi Jinping this week in a meeting fraught with political risks.
The president and Mr. Xi will engage in “intense diplomacy” and attempt to reestablish military communications between the two nuclear powers, according to the White House.
Mr. Biden is struggling with low poll numbers, a House corruption investigation and accusations that he has been much softer on China’s aggressions than was President Trump, his likely 2024 opponent who has surpassed him in polls.
The Biden administration has quietly set low expectations for the meeting with Mr. Xi as bilateral tensions rise, but Mr. Biden’s array of 2024 Republican opponents aren’t letting his aides lower the bar.
They say Mr. Biden needs to produce tangible results.
“Joe Biden must hold China accountable for COVID, tech theft and spying,” said Nikki Haley, a Republican presidential candidate and former ambassador to the United Nations. “If Biden leaves his meeting with Xi Jinping empty-handed, it will not only be embarrassing, it will be another CCP propaganda win.”
Congressional investigators also are watching.
House and Senate lawmakers have exposed evidence of Mr. Biden’s at least tangential involvement in his family’s lucrative foreign business deals, including contracts that raked in nearly $5 million from companies linked to the Chinese Communist Party. Critics say the Biden family’s deals with China will be among the factors that weaken the president’s hand with Mr. Xi.
Mr. Biden’s visit with Mr. Xi is set for Wednesday in the San Francisco area during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.
Meanwhile, House investigators are accelerating an inquiry into Biden family foreign business deals and what role Mr. Biden played while serving as vice president and shortly after leaving office.
Companies tied to the Chinese Communist Party figured prominently in the business portfolios of Mr. Biden’s son Hunter Biden and the president’s brother James Biden and brought the family the most money.
According to records obtained by congressional investigators, deals with the now-defunct Chinese energy company CEFC brought in nearly $5 million for Hunter Biden and James Biden. House investigators have linked a $40,000 check that James Biden sent to Mr. Biden in 2017 to a CEFC deal.
CEFC is linked to the Chinese Communist Party and its military, the People’s Liberation Army.
Mr. Biden is accused of being soft on China by scrapping some Trump-era crackdowns on the Chinese Communist Party, such as the Justice Department’s China Initiative to counter intellectual property theft.
Critics say Mr. Biden is doing little to counter China’s aggression in the Indo-Pacific region or even in his backyard. They note the Chinese spy balloon traversing the U.S. earlier this year before it was shot down off the coast of South Carolina.
Lawmakers see a connection between Mr. Biden’s friendly China policies and the money Chinese companies have deposited into his family’s bank accounts.
“I wonder if President Xi will remind President Biden that Chinese intelligence knows all about Biden family ‘business’ dealings with Chinese nationals connected to the Chinese Communist Party and People’s Liberation Party,” Sen. Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican who has been investigating the Biden family business deals for years, told The Washington Times.
It will be the president’s second sit-down in a year with Mr. Xi, but Mr. Biden is much more politically vulnerable this time.
Mr. Biden’s poll numbers have sunk to a new low, making Democrats panic about the 2024 presidential ticket.
The latest polls show Mr. Trump defeating Mr. Biden in the battleground states likely to decide the White House race.
Mr. Trump’s campaign has used the Biden-Xi meeting to contrast the former president’s tough-on-China policies with what it says is Mr. Biden’s record of standing down in the face of an increasingly threatening Beijing.
“Xi looks at Biden like he’s a big marshmallow,” Trump campaign spokesman Jason Miller said. “Weak, soft and easily manipulated. Xi knows Biden will never hold China accountable for the spy balloon or anything else.”
Republicans in the House and Senate are calling on Mr. Biden to make significant demands of Mr. Xi.
They want a response from China on its role in producing fentanyl, which has killed more than 70,000 Americans in the past year, answers for continued and significant intellectual property theft that has cost the U.S. billions of dollars, a condemnation of rampant human rights abuses, and an explanation about Chinese spying on U.S. soil.
Sen. Rick Scott, Florida Republican, said Mr. Biden has done nothing but appease China and he expects more of the same on Wednesday.
“I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if Xi gave Biden an award for all he’s done to help Communist China,” Mr. Scott said.
Mr. Biden’s defenders say he has mostly kept in place the $370 billion in tariffs on Chinese imports that Mr. Trump imposed and ordered the U.S. military to shoot down the Chinese spy balloon. The destruction of the balloon angered Chinese officials.
The White House provided few details about the meeting with Mr. Xi but said the Biden administration is “looking for specific outcomes” in areas where U.S.-China interests overlap, including the fentanyl trade and the reestablishment of military-to-military communications.
The two leaders also will discuss the Russia-Ukraine war and the Israeli war against the terrorist organization Hamas, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said.
“All in all, we’re looking forward to a productive meeting,” Mr. Sullivan said Monday. “President Biden has a long history with President Xi, their conversations are direct, they’re straightforward, and President Biden believes there is no substitute for leader-to-leader, face-to-face diplomacy to manage this complex relationship between the United States and China.”
Mr. Sullivan declined to answer a reporter’s question about criticism of the decision to clear out San Francisco’s dense population of homeless people ahead of Mr. Xi’s visit.
The suddenly pristine streets, often coated in needles and human feces, angered those who have demanded for years that city and state officials take control of the city’s homeless crisis, only to be ignored until world leaders arrived.
“You have people over to your house, you clean up your house,” said California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat.
• Susan Ferrechio can be reached at sferrechio@washingtontimes.com.
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