Joe Biden and Xi Jinping will meet in person before the G20 summit

First modification: 10/11/2022 – 23:42

On the sidelines of the G20 summit to be held next week in Bali, Indonesia, the White House announced a meeting on Monday between US President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping.

This will be the first face-to-face meeting between the presidents of the world’s two largest economies since Biden took office in January 2021 and weeks after Xi was given a third term as leader of the Communist Party.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement that the leaders would meet to “discuss efforts to maintain and deepen lines of communication between” the two countries and to “responsibly manage competition and work together, especially in the transnational challenges that affect the international community”.

Topics will focus on rising tensions between the two countries over the self-ruled island of Taiwan, which Beijing says is its territory, trade policies and the China-Russia relationship.

President Biden said at a press conference on Wednesday that he has a lot to discuss with Xi and that he seeks to expose what the “red lines” between the two countries are “and understand what he believes are China’s critical national interests” against to “critical interests of the United States,” to determine “whether or not they are in conflict.”

For weeks, officials from both sides have worked for this meeting to take place, although the White House has wanted to play down the importance of the meeting by telling journalists that it was possible that there would not be a joint statement after the face-to-face meeting.

In this regard, Jake Sullivan, White House national security adviser, said that he does not believe “that this meeting should be considered as one in which specific results are going to be announced”, but rather that “rather the two leaders are going to give instructions to their teams to work on a number of areas, both where “there are differences” and where they can “work together”.

The leaders had already traveled together in the past to the United States and China in 2011 and 2012, when both were vice presidents of their countries. Since Biden took office, they have had five phone or video calls.

Tempers heated in the bilateral relationship

Biden has strongly and repeatedly criticized China’s human rights abuses against the Uyghur Muslim minority, Beijing’s crackdown on pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong, restrictive business practices, not to mention provocations against Taiwan. , an ally of the United States, which has been the target of diplomatic battles between the two countries after the visit to the island of the president of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi.

In addition, the United States has censored China’s role in the war in Ukraine, since the Asian giant continues without criticizing or issuing sanctions against Russia, although for the moment it has not supplied weapons to Moscow.

Before the start of the war, Russian President Vladimir Putin met with Xi and issued a statement expressing hope for a “limitless” relationship for their nations.

However, President Biden’s reading is that both countries “have been keeping a little distance” and that he does not believe “that China has much respect for Russia or Putin.”

Another hot topic they will address is Washington’s frustration over Beijing’s inaction over North Korea’s provocations on the peninsula and not using its influence to get it to abandon its nuclear weapons program.

The Chinese position

For his part, the Chinese president has suggested that Washington wants to stifle China’s growing economy for wanting to overtake the US.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said China seeks “win-win cooperation with the United States,” while reiterating Beijing’s concern over the US stance on Taiwan.

For the spokesman, “the United States must stop obscuring, emptying and distorting the principle of “one China” and comply with the basic norms of international relations, including respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of other countries and non-interference in their internal affairs.”

With AP and Reuters