The leaders shook hands and spoke at length for the first time since President Biden entered the White House.
Europeans hope to make their voices heard on Russian aggression, but the summit was dominated by the meeting between the Chinese and American presidents.
Finding areas of convergence without avoiding hot-button issues: presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping tried Monday to ease tensions between the two rival powers during a three-hour meeting.
The leaders shook hands and spoke at length for the first time since President Biden entered the White House.
The meeting was held at a hotel on the eve of the G20 summit of major economies being held Tuesday and Wednesday on the Indonesian island of Bali.
Joe Biden said there was no need for a new Cold War as he left the talks, which were aimed at preventing issues of tension between the world’s largest economies from escalating into conflict.
Xi Jinping stressed that the two countries “share more common issues than issues that oppose them,” according to a foreign minister’s account of the meeting after three tense years without a face-to-face meeting between the two countries’ leaders.
“The world expects China and the United States to manage their relations properly,” the Chinese leader stressed.
Xi Jinping tried to reassure his counterpart by assuring him that China had no intention of taking the place of the United States or “changing the existing international order”.
In a sign of détente, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is expected to visit China early next year, the first visit of this level since 2018. And cooperation on climate, which was interrupted last summer, will resume between the two largest CO2 emitters.
Over the past three years, the rivalry between the two countries has intensified as China has grown more powerful and assertive, challenging U.S. leadership and the geopolitical landscape since the end of World War II.
Fueling tensions, Beijing refused to condemn Russia’s February invasion of Ukraine, but the White House said it had obtained Chinese assurances, citing a consensus that it would not use nuclear weapons.
Joe Biden also urged Xi to encourage North Korea to be “responsible”.
