The White House said on Monday that when President Joe Biden and President Xi Jinping of China get together this week on the fringes of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting, they will talk about enhancing communication and controlling competition.
Biden and Xi will meet in person for the first time in a year on Wednesday in the San Francisco Bay Area. The goal of the high-stakes diplomacy is to reduce tensions between the two giants.
White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan informed reporters that Biden feels that in order to handle the complex relationship, face-to-face diplomacy is the only option.
“We anticipate that the leaders will discuss some of the most fundamental elements of the US-PRC bilateral relationship, including the continued importance of strengthening open lines of communication and managing competition responsibly so that it does not veer into conflict,” Speaking on the People’s Republic of China, Sullivan stated.
“The way we achieve that is through intense diplomacy. That’s how we clear up misperceptions and avoid surprises,” he further said.
According to Sullivan, Biden would enter the summit “on a solid footing,” having put the country in a position to compete successfully both domestically and internationally and boasting “the strongest recovery and lowest inflation of any leading economy.”
He stated that Washington was hoping to see some concrete results from the summit, such as the restoration of military-to-military relations with China and progress against the fentanyl trade, which has turned into a national crisis.
Following US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, an island that China asserts is democratically administered, last year, China severed military-to-military ties with the US. After the United States shot down a US surveillance balloon in February, tense ties worsened further.
China had been “constructive” on the matter in talks preceding the summit, according to Sullivan, who said that conversation between the military was the only way to guarantee that rivalry would not turn into violence.
Since Biden’s inauguration in 2021, Xi and Biden have had six contacts during which they have spent hours in talking. They have known each other for over ten years.
But since then, they have only had one face-to-face meeting, and Xi hasn’t been to the US since 2017. Officials and analysts predict that there will be mistrust between them and distorted perceptions of one other are goals when they meet at the table.
