White House considering talks between Joe Biden and Xi Jinping
- Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan said that the two leaders are due to ‘take stock of where we are in the relationship’
- Remarks come after Biden finishes a European tour intent on assembling a united front against Beijing
“It’s now just a question of when and how,” he said.
The comments come as the world’s two largest economies continue to feud over a long list of grievances.
Chinese officials have lashed out at the US in response, accusing Washington of meddling in China’s internal affairs.
Shortly after Sullivan made his statement, though, the US State Department told reporters that the suggestion of a meeting was not a sign of any breakthrough but was merely the reflection of Biden’s commitment to diplomacy.
State Department spokesman Ned Price said that Sullivan “was speaking to the proposition that the president has put forward, that there’s no substitute for personal diplomacy”.
“He was making the point that that is not unique to … the meeting between President Biden and President Putin. That applies across the board when it comes to our principled diplomacy,” Price said.
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Price added that there was “nothing to preview at this time but it’s something that we would remain open to, if the conditions are right and the circumstances are warranted”.
After that meeting, a reporter asked Biden if he had plans to talk “old friend to old friend” with Xi, about China’s cooperation in an investigation into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic.
“Let’s get something straight,” Biden snapped. “We know each other well; we’re not old friends. It’s just pure business.”
Biden and Xi have met numerous times throughout their careers. Both men served as vice-presidents at the same time, before Xi rose to become China’s paramount leader.
They spoke on the phone in February after Biden took office, and Xi participated remotely in Biden’s White House summit on climate change in April, but they have not yet met face-to-face in their current roles.
Biden called Xi a “thug” dictator during his presidential campaign, and said in March that the Chinese leader doesn’t have a “democratic bone in his body”.
Sullivan, the national security adviser, said on Thursday that Biden “will look for opportunities to engage with President Xi going forward”.
“Soon enough we will sit down to work out the right modality for the two presidents to engage,” he said.
“It could be a phone call, it could be a meeting on the margins of another international summit, it could be something else.”
In October, Biden and Xi are both expected to attend the G20 summit in Italy, a potential site for a summit between the two leaders, Sullivan said, though he added that “we don’t have any particular plans at the moment”.
Former presidents Barack Obama and George W Bush also held such meetings with their Chinese counterparts at the annual gathering.
Additional reporting by Robert Delaney
