The long-awaited one-on-one meeting comes as relations between the superpowers have sunk to their lowest level in decades. The two will meet on the Indonesian island of Bali ahead of the annual Group of 20 (G20) summit that will bring together the leaders of the world’s major developed and emerging economies. Biden attends the meeting after a major victory at home with Democrats gaining control of the Senate, a development recognized by world leaders, while Xi secured an unprecedented third term in office last month. “I know I come on stronger, but I don’t need to. I know Xi Jinping, I’ve spent more time with him than any other world leader.” Biden told reporters in Cambodia on Sunday after the Senate results. “There is never any miscalculation as to where each of us stands.” The US president, who is on a whirlwind trip with stops at an international climate summit in Egypt and an ASEAN meeting and East Asia Summit in Cambodia ahead of the G20, hopes to build a “floor for relationship’ with China and ensure that there are rules that bound competition between the two nations. Biden recently said he was unwilling to make fundamental concessions when he meets with Xi and wanted both leaders to draw their “red lines” and resolve areas of conflict. The meeting is unlikely to produce concrete results and no joint statement is expected, the White House said, but could help stabilize ties marked by rising tensions over issues from Hong Kong and Taiwan to the South China Sea, the coercive trade practices and US restrictions on Chinese technology. Biden and Xi, who have had five phone or video calls since Biden took office in January 2021, last met in person during the Obama administration. Tensions flared especially after US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s August trip to Taiwan, the self-governing democratic island that Beijing claims as its territory. White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the meeting could last two or more hours and Biden would be “completely direct and direct” in the conversation. “The president sees the United States and China as engaged in a fierce competition, but that competition should not turn into a conflict or a confrontation,” Sullivan told reporters, promising comments to Biden afterward. He said Biden would also look for areas where the United States and China could work together, including on climate change or public health.
DATE RELATIONSHIPS IN A DECADE
The two leaders know each other well, having traveled more than 17,000 miles together and spent 78 hours in meetings, according to Biden’s calculations. They spent time together in the United States and China in 2011 and 2012, when they were both serving as vice presidents of their respective countries. Beijing, frustrated by what it sees as the Biden administration’s weaponization of economic policies, has sought to expand ties with Europe and Africa. The Xi administration also criticized the Biden administration’s stance on Taiwan as undermining China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. The Chinese president has also suggested that Washington wants to quell Beijing’s growing influence as it seeks to overtake the United States as the world’s largest economy. Monday’s meeting on the sidelines of the Group of 20 leaders meeting in Bali, Indonesia, comes weeks after the Biden administration unveiled a new national security strategy that sees an increasingly authoritarian China as the most consequential challenge to the global order. “The Biden administration will try to kill two birds with one stone — enlist China’s support on issues like reining in North Korea and climate change — to create some basis for China-US cooperation,” said Oriana Skylar. Mastro, a China expert at Stanford University. Reporting by Nandita Bose, David Brunnstrom, Simon Lewis, writing by Andrea Shalal and Nandita Bose. Edited by Raju Gopalakrishnan and Lisa Shumaker Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
