Washington: US President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping will hold their first in-person meeting next week in Indonesia’s capital, on the sidelines of the summit of the Group of 20 industrialised countries (G20), the White House said in a statement on Thursday.
“The Leaders will discuss efforts to maintain and deepen lines of communication between the United States and the PRC, responsibly manage competition, and work together where our interests align, especially on transnational challenges that affect the international community. The two Leaders will also discuss a range of regional and global issues,” the White House said in the statement announcing the meeting for November 14.
The US side hopes to discuss ways to “manage competition responsibly” with China and use the meeting, the first since Biden took office two years, as a platform to determine the “redlines” for the two sides.
Speaking at a press conference on Wednesday, when asked about the upcoming meeting in Bali, Biden recalled his earlier conversations with Xi and said, “I have told him: I am looking for competition, not conflict.
“What I want to do with him when we talk is lay out what each of our redlines are, understand what he believes to be in the critical national interests of China, what I know to be the critical interests of the United States, and to determine whether or not they conflict with one another. And if they do, how to resolve it and how to work it out.”
Biden also said that he intends to discuss the issue of Taiwan, fair trade, and “relationships relating to his relationship with other countries in the region” with Xi.
In response to a question on the China-Russia relationship and whether the two countries are putting together a “real alliance”, Biden went further than any American official has gone so far in outlining the differences between the two.
“No, I don’t think there’s a lot of respect that China has for Russia or for Putin. I don’t think they’re looking at it as a particular alliance. Matter of fact, they have been sort of keeping their distance a little bit,” he said
The president also said that it remained to be seen if his Chinese counterpart had “backed off from his initial judgment” on Ukraine.
Speaking to reporters, a senior administration official said that while the two leaders have spoken five times since Biden took office, there is no substitute for face-to-face diplomacy and the idea was to “build a floor for the relationship and lay the rules of the road for managing the competition”.
US is looking to a “strategic, in-depth, substantive..meaningful, candid, private” discussion, the official said, adding that Biden was going to be honest about Taiwan, human rights issues in China, and harmful economic practices. Biden was also going to discuss areas where the two countries can work together, and discuss global and regional issues, including Russia’s war in Ukraine and North Korea.
The meeting is not going to be driven by deliverables and is not expected to yield any joint statement or agreement, according to the official.
“The main objective is to deepen an understanding of each other’s intentions and priorities, reduce misunderstanding and misperceptions, maintain ongoing lines of communication to both manage differences and in areas where we can work together,” said the official. As per the current system in the country, Xi is the key official expected to be engaging on the Chinese side.
When asked about the US tech export restrictions to China, especially in semiconductors, the official said that this was not driven by a policy of “containment” and Biden would clarify that to Xi if it came up. Instead, it was restricted to high-end technologies which fed into Beijing’s high end military applications and was a decision driven by national security considerations.
“We reject the characterisation that some in Beijing may have been applying that this is containment,” the official said.
