The setting also matters. The meeting between the presidents of the United States and China, Joe Biden and Xi Jinping, took place at the Filoli mansion in the San Francisco area, a luxury compound erected in the era of the gold rush where the music of Hollywood still resounds.

Although today the site is open to visitors and Silicon Valley titans hold weddings there, this historic residence was closed and barred on Wednesday. A huge security cordon prevented at least getting close to it so that Xi could neither see nor hear the critical protesters.

But its rooms are very well known to citizens all over the world. This house was used as a set in the series Dinastia, popular in the eighties. It was a global hit that played with appearances and backstabbing.

This contradictory duality marked the meeting of the leaders of the two great economic and military powers.

The face-to-face, the first in a year, served to show the friendly face and try to stabilize a relationship damaged in recent months by the shooting down of spy balloons that flew over North America, the tension in Taiwan, the numerous interceptions of United States aircraft in international space or the confrontation in the disputed waters of the Philippines and the China Sea.

In the end, modest agreements were announced that do not hide the discord between the two great world powers. Their interests travel by roads in the opposite direction.

An expert in China defined the context with a funny saying: “Both parties admitted that they cannot urinate in the same container, but promised not to urinate in each other.” More diplomatically, Xi expressed a phrase that has resonated. “Planet Earth is big enough for the success of both countries,” he said.

There are those in the United States who doubt this statement, like other promises that the Chinese leader has left unfulfilled on his road map. There was an agreement to recover the channels between the military. Other times this was wet paper for Xi. The same happens with the pact to combat the invasion of fentanyl in the US by cutting the Chinese export of the chemical substances, especially to Mexico, to make this poison. There was no shortage of people who remembered that it is not the first time that something like this has been announced.

It was clear that they did not have much in common, or less than they tried to pretend in public. In the end there was no joint statement or shared appearance for the press.

Their destinations in the Californian night bifurcated.

Biden appeared before the press to describe the meeting as one of “the most constructive and productive”, in which “important progress” had been made to stabilize relations between the two warring nations. In his role as host, he reiterated that they have known each other for more than a decade. Although he did not talk about friendship, he remarked that both value the conversation as a piece to avoid dangerous mistakes.

It was when he left the room that Biden dug the divisive trench. A journalist asked him if he still thinks that Xi is a dictator, as he defined him a few months ago, which infuriated the Chinese Executive. “Yes, it is. He is someone who rules a country that is communist”, he clarified.

Aside from fentanyl or climate change, none of the issues that really confront them were addressed. During the conversation, Xi insisted on the determination to unify Taiwan with China, without alluding to the potential use of force. And he denounced Washington’s “futile efforts” to contain China, but accepted that technological restrictions imposed by the US are penalizing them. He even expressed his displeasure that the investment and export controls “cause serious harm to China’s legitimate interests.”

While Biden faced the media to display how diplomacy deals with autocrats, Xi went to a dinner, at $2,000 a cover, with the chief executives of the rival country’s big companies. There he talked about pandas (he suggested their return to the USA), ping-pong and, above all, the doors open to the Asian giant for its investments. Money doesn’t know about homelands or human rights or dictatorships.

Some joked that the meeting with Joe Biden was a cover for the business dinner.