Xi Jinping’s Washington visit was more than ceremony and trade deals. The US and China are building a more stable relationship around regular summitry, negotiated differences and mutual recognition of power. Australia needs to understand what has changed.

Last week, on the tarmac of Andrews Air Force Base in Washington, a key moment in global affairs occurred. Not since JFK met Harold Macmillan in 1962 had a US president welcomed a visiting head of state at the airport. The symbolism was as profound as it was considered. Through that gesture the US president was acknowledging that China was a co-equal power with the United States.

It must have been particularly satisfying to President Xi. His presidency will be seen as one during which China rose from being a significantly weaker, challenging, ascendant power, to being acknowledged by the US as its equal. If Xi is looking for a legacy, this will surely be sitting on the mantelpiece.

The Washington meeting was the culmination of a reset in US/China bilateral relations that began in earnest last November at the Busan APEC leaders’ meeting. Trump flew to Busan and met only with Xi and then turned his back on the rest of the gathered leaders, announcing that he had just had a ‘G2’ meeting with Xi and looked forward to future meetings.

That meeting agreed on the ‘Busan Pause’ or the tariff truce. In May this year Trump visited Beijing and announced progress on one of the administration’s key priorities: tougher Chinese action against the fentanyl trade. The intention to establish a Board of Trade and a Board of Investment were also announced.

With the just-concluded Washington meeting, the media focus on ‘deliverables’ was understandable. But the US and Australian media covering Xi’s visit seem to have written their stories before it began.

The most predictable and ubiquitous headlines were different variants of the ‘all form but no substance’ theme. Some journalists even feigned deep surprise that many issues remained over which the US and China still differed.

It has taken some days, but both the US and China have now released their official accounts of the outcomes from the meetings. While the accounts from both sides are largely consistent with each other, not surprisingly emphases and some points differ.

The US statement highlighted the agreement over tougher Chinese enforcement of controls over opiates and other substances, noting recent arrests by Chinese authorities based on cooperation with US anti-narcotics agencies and the ‘operationalising’ of the Board of Trade.

The Board of Trade will recommend tariff cuts for $30 billion of non-sensitive goods in each direction. The US expects this to lead to increased exports to China of agricultural goods, fish and seafood, lumber, cosmetics and medical devices.

Agreement was also reached for China to import an additional 10 million tonnes of metallurgical coal from the US, something the Australian media has ignored, despite its likely harm to Australia’s own interests.

A Board of Investment will also be established to explore potential investment opportunities, identify impediments to investment and provide a ‘structured channel’ for both sides to address ‘investment-related’ issues. This is something that the Australian Government would be well advised to study to see its possible relevance for Australia-China investment relations. Again, the Australian media has not reported on this.

According to the US, both sides have agreed to address US concerns over the supply of rare earths and related supply chains. And the US has requested China to increase production of refined petroleum product to stabilise global supply.

The US account noted that the leaders discussed several security issues, including Russia, North Korea and Iran. On Iran, the White House claimed that leaders agreed that Iran could not have a nuclear weapon and that “no country or institution can be allowed to impose tolls on international waterways”. In what seems to have been an achievement by the US side, China’s statement was broadly in line with this on Iran. It is unusual for China to comment on third countries, especially those with whom it has friendly relations.

On AI, the US said both leaders agreed to use the term ‘super intelligence’ (SI) and will establish a ‘bilateral communications channel for SI incidents’. Another exchange has been scheduled for their next meeting in November at the time of the Shenzhen APEC Summit. The Chinese statement, however, continued to use ‘AI’.

Both statements emphasised that the leaders would meet again in November when China hosts the APEC Summit and again in December when the US hosts the G20 Summit in Florida. This underscores the extent to which these bilateral summits are beginning to institutionalise the concept of G2 and seek to carry forward, albeit a somewhat modest, work program. But with the return of regular US/China summitry, other occasions will occur to execute items agreed and to set out new initiatives.

Two novel elements in the statements are noteworthy.

First, both sides acknowledged that they were allies in the Second World War and fought to win the war. The ‘war’ is of course the Pacific War against Japan. Although Taiwan is not mentioned in either statement, the unambiguous reference to Second World War allies having “fought side-by-side to win the war” (US language) will be understood by the Chinese side as endorsing its view that the Taiwan question depends on the cession of Japanese-occupied territories, including Taiwan, to China in September 1945, rather than on the 1972 Shanghai Communiqué.

In its statement on the Trump/Xi meetings, the US largely adopted Beijing’s language of a relationship of “strategic stability on the basis of respect, fairness, and reciprocity”.

Calculations of who ‘won’ are highly subjective. Most negotiations end with a balance of unhappiness. Trump achieved two domestic objectives: drugs and trade. Xi, the endorsement of his bid for China to be treated as an equal to the US. This for him is as much a domestic imperative as an international one.

Xi returned home with his authority bolstered. Trump to a reaction from within his Republican party and China hawks across the aisle. For now, the challenge to this new compact between the US and China is the extent to which the White House can resist the hawks still hankering after US primacy. They will be amply supported by their kindred spirits in most of Australia’s foreign and security policy think tanks, university departments, and conservative media outlets.

Gareth Evans in his memoir recalled Bill Clinton in the 1990s saying that Washington’s ‘central dilemma’ was:

“America had two choices. We can use our great, unprecedented military and economic power to try to stay top dog on the global block in perpetuity. Or we can seek to use that power to create a world in which we are comfortable living when we are no longer top dog on the global block.”

In this, Clinton could see around corners. Few in Washington and Canberra these days can. Trump seems to have done so, wittingly or unwittingly. The future of Asia-Pacific peace and stability depends on more doing so. Last week a hopeful start was made.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.