"CHINESE COASTER" - 2: AT THE TURN OF 2023-2024

The most important event in the China-U.S. relations at the end of 2023 was the meeting of Xi Jinping and J. Biden in San Francisco on the sidelines of the APEC Summit in November 2023. The meeting did not become a breakthrough in relations between the two countries, but it created the foundations for establishing cooperation in mutually beneficial areas. Agreements were reached on the restoration of military contacts, the resumption of activities of working groups on economic and financial cooperation, the development of cooperation in the fields of artificial intelligence, green economy, climate change, etc. At the same time, many economic and political issues remained unresolved: American trade and economic sanctions against China, and, most importantly, disagreements over Taiwan. Against the background of the China-U.S. Summit, Beijing policy has strengthened its two-vector nature. Before the Summit in the United States, a Sino-Russian Summit was held in Beijing in October 2023. Later, in December 2023, the China-EU Summit took place. Their results are contradictory. Xi described Sino-Russian relations as "healthy and stable". The Summit with the EU ended almost to no avail. An important foreign policy move made by Beijing was the Belt and Road Summit of October 2023, at which Chinese plans to institutionalize this strategy were announced, including the creation of the Belt and Road secretariat and "other institutions", supported with 100 bln U.S. dollars injections. In domestic politics, Xi's authoritarianism continued to strengthen, accompanied by restrictions on the freedom of speech. In the economy, China kept the GDP growth rate for 2023 in the desired range from 5 to 5.5%. The main task for Beijing in the field of economics for 2024 is at least to keep the growth rate of the national GDP at about 5%.