President Biden will meet with President Xi of China today in California. This will be the first face-to-face meeting since a meeting in Indonesia almost exactly one year ago. The goal seems to be to try to normalize relations somewhat, but expectations have been set pretty low, specifically there might be an agreement to limit Chinese chemicals used to produce fentanyl.

A senior administration official said they are expected to reach the outline of an agreement that would commit Beijing to regulating components of fentanyl, the drug that has driven a devastating opioid epidemic in the United States. But China has made similar commitments before.

Any such agreement is almost certainly going to be worthless. China made the same agreement with President Trump five years ago and with President Obama before that.

…in September 2016, when the Obama administration said China and the United States had agreed on “enhanced measures” meant to keep fentanyl from coming into the United States. But in its official statements or state media reports made at the time, the Chinese government never specified the steps it intended to take, and its follow-up has been patchy at best.

So when the Trump administration said on Saturday that President Xi Jinping of China had agreed to designate fentanyl as a controlled substance in “a wonderful humanitarian gesture,” analysts said there was little to cheer about.

“It’s in many ways all theater from the White House and very little serious substance,” said John Collins, executive director of the International Drug Policy Unit at the London School of Economics. “It seems to me the same story again.”

So Joe Biden is just the latest president to take this ride of Chinese promises that amount to nothing. You can’t blame him for trying but you also can’t credit China for something it has no intention of actually stopping. In fact, I’d go out on an limb and suggest this is an area where Xi sees China as superior to the US so he has no intention of ever stopping it. Did I mention that expectations were low?

In briefing after briefing, administration officials have tried to lower expectations about the kind of concrete commitments that used to surround such summits, saying that the mere fact that the leaders of the world’s top two economies, and most potent militaries, are communicating again is itself a sign of progress.

But over at the Washington Post, Josh Rogin argues that even if nothing much is expected from this meeting that doesn’t mean there is no danger. In fact, Joe Biden seems to have great faith in his personal relationship with Xi, another issue about which his memory is pretty foggy.

At least 20 times since taking office, Biden has publicly spoken about his close bond with Xi, forged when they were both vice presidents. The version Biden told at a Maryland fundraiser in June included the claim he had spent 85 hours alone with Xi and that they had traveled some 17,000 miles together. Biden recalled one of their trips that captured the specialness of their connection.

“And we were on the Tibetan plateau on one of our meetings, and he looked at me and he said, ‘Can you define America for me?’ And I said, ‘Yes, I can, in one word: possibilities,’” Biden said.

The numbers vary in each telling, but various fact-checkers have pointed out that Biden has spent only a handful of hours with Xi and traveled with him no more than about 1,000 miles. And the pair’s visit to rural China in 2011 was not, in fact, on the Tibetan plateau.

So Biden may not be viewing this relationship as it really is. Whatever bond he thinks he has with Xi doesn’t mean that Xi feels the same way.

What does Xi really feel about the United States? The NY Times published a deep dive on that subject Monday and what they found is that Xi presents one face when speaking to US officials and another when speaking back home.

When President Xi Jinping of China made his first state visit to the United States in 2015, he wrapped his demands for respect in reassurances.

He courted tech executives, while defending China’s internet controls. He denied that China was militarizing the disputed South China Sea, while asserting its maritime claims there. He spoke hopefully of a “new model” for great power relations, in which Beijing and Washington would coexist peacefully as equals.

But back in China, in meetings with the military, Mr. Xi was warning in strikingly stark terms that intensifying competition between a rising China and a long-dominant United States was all but unavoidable, and that the People’s Liberation Army should be prepared for a potential conflict…

Despite his assurances to President Obama not to militarize the South China Sea, Mr. Xi told his senior commanders in February 2016 that China must bolster its presence there, saying: “We’ve seized the opportunity, eliminated intervention and sped up construction on South China Sea islands and shoals, achieving a historic breakthrough in maritime strategy and defending maritime rights.”

Xi might say any number of things in his meeting with Biden today but the truth is he is planning for future conflict with the United States. Here’s Rogin’s conclusion:

Biden said on Tuesday that his objective with Xi is to “change the relationship for the better.” Xi’s objective is different; he wants to lull Washington into a false sense of security while speeding up China’s plans to dominate the region and change the global order to benefit Beijing’s interests.

Hopefully someone around Biden is paying attention and won’t let the US fall for another round of empty promises.