While the face-to-face meeting between US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping at the G20 summit in Bali, Indonesia is “important and constructive", Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong says that “we shouldn't have any illusions that this one meeting has changed things overnight.”
Speaking at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum, he explains that this is because there have been such deep suspicions and distrust built up over so many years between the two sides.
Referring to the saying that “trust is built in drops but lost in buckets,” Wong says that this meeting is the first step in a “long journey” of building trust, and recognises that there are still major differences between both sides.