Joe Biden-Xi Jinping meeting at G20 sets stage for improved communications, says White House official

US President Joe Biden’s recent meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping was “constructive” in stabilising bilateral relations and laying the groundwork for “more robust” in-person interactions between Washington and Beijing in 2023, a White House official said on Tuesday.

The two leaders managed to “put a floor under the US-China … relationship”, one of the key goals for the meeting on the sidelines of this month’s G20 summit in Indonesia, said Michael Pyle, the US deputy national security adviser for international economics.

“It was a constructive engagement between the two presidents,” said Pyle, who served as Washington’s G20 “sherpa”. “There were objectives around finding a path forward constructively that were also achieved.”

He said the meeting between Biden and Xi not only provided an important opportunity to “forcefully” speak about American values and interests but also paved the way for further in-person engagements and renewed efforts on shared challenges like climate change.

Pyle’s remarks came as relations between Washington and Beijing remained near their lowest point in decades, with disagreements fuelled by issues including Taiwan, Hong Kong, Xinjiang and the technology war, though there are increasing signs of recent efforts by both sides to mend ties.

The meeting between Biden and Xi was followed by a series of in-person talks between the countries’ senior officials in finance, trade, climate change and defence.

Still, the Pentagon warned in a report on Tuesday that Beijing is expanding its nuclear force and is on pace to rapidly close the gap with the US.

Republicans in the US Congress have criticised the Biden administration for “weakness” in its response to protests in China against the zero-Covid policy.

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In a National Security Strategy report published in last month, the White House recognised China as “the only competitor with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military and technological power to do it”.

Pyle said Biden articulated a set of core beliefs about how the countries’ economic relationship needs to work and how China should behave on the global stage. Biden also continued to address concerns about China’s economic model and the need to see progress on that area, Pyle added.

He said Biden told Xi that it was important to achieve debt relief for lower-income countries and for some middle-income nations, and that China needed to be a constructive partner on that front. He criticised Beijing as a large creditor for not doing enough to facilitate debt restructuring under the G20 common framework.

“While they were a part of signing up for the common framework, they haven’t really been a part of following through and delivering on that,” Pyle said.