Biden and Xi make headway in talks
Secretary of State Blinken to visit China next year
Presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping found areas of common ground during the powers' first in-person summit in three years, including a joint warning against Russia using nuclear weapons in Ukraine.
Xi and Biden both sought to lower the temperature as they met for more than two hours on the resort island of Bali, with both presidents saying they wanted to prevent high tensions from spilling over into conflict.
In a sign of headway on working together, the White House announced that Secretary of State Antony Blinken will visit China next year — the most senior US visitor since 2018.
Biden and Xi, who is on only his second overseas trip since the pandemic, shook hands and smiled before the two countries' flags at a hotel in Bali, where the Group of 20 opens a summit today. Biden, sitting across from Xi at facing tables, said that Beijing and Washington “share responsibility” to show the world that they can “manage our differences, prevent competition from becoming conflict”.
Xi told Biden that the world has “come to a crossroads”. “The world expects that China and the United States will properly handle the relationship,” Xi told him.
He said China and the United States “share more, not less” in common interests, according to a Chinese statement.
Xi told Biden that Taiwan is the “first red line that must not be crossed in China-us relations”, according to the Chinese foreign ministry statement.
The White House said that Biden told Xi he opposed any policy changes on Taiwan.
Biden raised US “objections” to China's “coercive and increasingly aggressive actions toward Taiwan, which undermine peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait and in the broader region, and jeopardise global prosperity,” the White House said.
Xi and Biden “reiterated their agreement that a nuclear war should never be fought and can never be won and underscored their opposition to the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine”, the White House statement said.
Biden also nudged China to rein in ally North Korea after a record-breaking spate of missile tests has raised fears that Pyongyang will soon carry out its seventh nuclear test. Biden told Xi that “all members of the international community have an interest in encouraging the DPRK to act responsibly”, the White House said.
Xi's last in-person meeting with a US president was in 2019 with Donald Trump.
Although the meeting was the first time Xi and Biden have met as presidents, the pair have an unusually long history together.
By Biden's estimation, he spent 67 hours as vice-president in person with Xi including on a 2011 trip to China aimed at better understanding China's then-leader-in-waiting, and a 2017 meeting in the final days of Barack Obama's administration.