LETTER FROM SAN FRANCISCO
Hundreds of posters appeared on the streets of San Francisco at the end of October. "It all starts here." The advertising campaign recalls all that the city has brought to the world: technological innovations, social revolutions – 1967's Summer of Love, Levi's jeans, chatbots, driverless cars and "Martini. Mai Tai. And the Uber ride home." It is financed by a consortium of personalities and companies hoping to restore the city's image, damaged for months by the spectacle of hundreds of drug addicts prostrate on the sidewalks and high on the synthetic opioid fentanyl.
The slogan sums up the mood in San Francisco at the opening of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit. Some 30,000 world leaders, CEOs and media from 21 countries, including China, Japan, Chile, Mexico, Canada and Russia, are taking over the city. San Francisco has not seen an international event of this magnitude since 1945 and the conference that led to the birth of the UN and the definition of the principle of "collective security" intended to guarantee peace.
The city would have no problem if a degree of de-escalation in international relations were to begin here too. "The city can once again be a beacon of peace," Christopher Tang, professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, argued in the San Francisco Chronicle. The researcher does not overlook the fact that some APEC members are at loggerheads over the conflict in Ukraine, the Israel-Hamas war and territorial disputes in the South China Sea. But, in his view, the world's leading economic powers need stability.
The most eagerly awaited moment of the conference is the meeting between Joe Biden and Xi Jinping on November 15. At their last meeting, at the G20 summit in Bali, Indonesia, in 2022, the American and Chinese presidents promised to manage their relationship "responsibly." Meanwhile, there was the spy balloon affair earlier this year and a rise in antagonism to the point where the mere announcement of a meeting looks like a success. "The world is hoping to see a signal that the two great powers are committed to ensuring that competition does not turn into conflict," said Colin Kahl, a former senior Pentagon official under the Obama administration and now a researcher at Stanford University. "The meeting itself is the message."
The San Francisco Bay Area is the perfect backdrop for a re-engagement with China. A legacy of history – the gold rush of the 19th century and the construction of the transcontinental railroad – and the recent explosion in technology, the city's population is 22% of Chinese origin and 40% of Asian origin. South of San Francisco, Silicon Valley has been at the heart of the Chinese-American ferment of the 2010-2020 decade, which has seen an increase in exchanges at the individual level – students, filmmakers and investors.
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