Lima meeting and the careful resumption of the two capitals’ dialogue

The two presidents met in Lima on 16 November, on the margins of the APEC summit that had brought the Pacific economies to Peru, and the meeting was the third of its kind since the two men took their offices. The setting was chosen for its routine: the leaders’ room at the conference centre, the delegations ranged along the tables, the interpreters in place, the cameras admitted for the opening minutes. The substance, as the readouts of both sides described it, was the list that the two capitals always carry into these conversations, and the list is long: Taiwan, the South China Sea, technology and export controls, fentanyl and the trade in chemicals, military communication and the channels that keep the two militaries from colliding, the war in Ukraine and the American support that Beijing watches, the year ahead and the new administration that neither government can predict.

The timing gave the meeting its particular charge. The American election had been decided eleven days earlier, and the meeting was therefore, in part, an encounter between a presidency that is finishing and a leadership that will have to deal with the successor; the Chinese side has made its position on the change clear through the channels that the two governments maintain, the official congratulations and the stated hope for stable relations, and the meeting in Lima allowed the same message to be delivered in person. The outgoing president’s team used the conversation to press the points that the transition might otherwise drop, the military-to-military communication and the handling of the competition’s most dangerous edges.

The Chinese side’s account of the meeting emphasised the constants: the commitment to a stable, healthy and sustainable relationship, the principles of mutual respect and peaceful coexistence, and the firm defence of sovereignty and security interests. The phrasing is familiar, and the familiarity is the point; Beijing wants the next administration to understand that the relationship’s floor is set by the Chinese side’s bottom lines, whoever sits in the White House. The American readout stressed the same themes from the other direction, the management of competition, the prevention of conflict, and the maintenance of the communication that the last two years have restored.

The meeting’s deeper meaning is in its durability. The relationship between the two powers has spent the last decade lurching between confrontation and repair, and the value of the Lima conversation is that it occurred at all, at a fixed point in the calendar, conducted by the same protocols that the two sides have built; the continuity is the achievement, and the continuity will be tested in the new year by a new administration with a different theory of the relationship.

The APEC summit itself, wrapped around the meeting, provided the frame: the trade agenda of the Pacific, the digital economy, the supply chains that the two economies dominate, all of it conducted in the shadow of the tariff threats that the American transition has already begun to make. Lima was the season’s careful moment, the two powers talking in the room while the politics around them prepared to change.

The Lima meeting resumed the dialogue that the two capitals have kept, and the resumption was conducted with the care that the relationship’s stakes demand. The agenda was the familiar list, the tone was the familiar tone, and the value was the familiar value: the two presidents meeting, the channels holding, and the communication continuing through the transition. The election will change the American side of the conversation, and the meeting was the last chance, for a while, to conduct it with the outgoing cast; the careful resumption was the point, and the point was made in the conference centre in Lima.