How two men met to change the world as we were looking the other way...

With all eyes were on the wars raging in Gaza and Ukraine, a quiet meeting on a San Francisco country estate passed without fanfare. But Joe Biden’s summit with China’s Xi Jinping could signal a major shift in global power, writes Mary Dejevsky

Does Biden’s meeting with Xi Jinping signal a shift in global power? (New York Times)

In retrospect, it may turn out to have been the most significant encounter not just of this week, but of this month and this year. It took place neither in the Middle East or Ukraine – the two regions that currently dominate the Western news media – but about as far from these conflict zones as it was possible to be.

In a meeting confirmed only at the last moment, the president of China, Xi Jinping, crossed the Pacific for talks with the president of the United States, Joe Biden, at a country estate on the edge of San Francisco.

It was the first time the two leaders had met for a year, but a year’s interval between national leaders is nothing uncommon. What made this a landmark event were the doubts that it would happen at all, Xi’s willingness to travel to the United States, and the considerable shifts in the dynamics of global power that have taken place over that year.