Biden to Meet China’s Xi Nov. 14 in Bid to Buoy Strained Ties

© Reuters.

(Bloomberg) -- US President Joe Biden will seek to set a floor to prevent US-China ties from deteriorating further when he meets his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping Nov. 14, a senior Biden administration official said.

The official, who briefed reporters Thursday, said the meeting’s main objective was for Biden and Xi to deepen their understanding of each other’s priorities and intentions -- and to set so-called rules of the road.

That’s a goal that the White House has been seeking since the leaders’ first call in 2021. 

In the latest sign that the White House isn’t expecting any tangible policy breakthroughs from Biden and Xi’s first face-to-face meeting, the official said the session was not being driven by a search for deliverables and that there would not be a joint statement from the event. 

The two leaders will discuss the war in Ukraine, recent North Korean nuclear activity, efforts to curb climate change and other areas where the nations can work together, the official said. 

Biden vowed Wednesday to make no “fundamental concessions” to Xi, reinforcing already low expectations for any major breakthrough in strained ties between the world’s two largest economies. 

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre confirmed in a statement that the meeting would take place Nov. 14. 

Xi’s last meeting with a US leader came in June 2019, when he reached a truce with Donald Trump that led to a trade deal six months later -- right before relations fell into a downward spiral as Covid-19 spread around the globe.

Biden said he expects to discuss contentious issues such as trade and Taiwan, which China has put under increased military pressure since US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taipei in August. His administration also imposed sweeping curbs on the sale of advanced chips to China, a move designed to maintain the US’s technological edge over Beijing.

“I’m not willing to make any fundamental concessions,” Biden told a White House news conference Wednesday. “I’m looking for competition, not conflict.”

The US and China have veered toward confrontation over the past few years even as they face greater calls to cooperate on trade and pressing issues like climate change, Covid-19 and Russia’s war in Ukraine. 

Both are increasingly suspicious of each other’s intentions: The National Security Strategy released by Biden last month cast China as trying to supplant the US as the world’s dominant power, while a defiant Xi declared that the “rejuvenation of the Chinese nation is now on an irreversible historical course.”

With relations between the two nations at their lowest point in decades, both presidents have put some domestic uncertainty behind them in recent weeks. 

Xi has secured a precedent-breaking third term as leader and stacked the Communist Party’s leadership with loyalists. Biden emerged stronger than expected from US midterm elections, telling reporters Wednesday that he plans to run for re-election in 2024, though he has yet to make a formal announcement. 

China so far hasn’t confirmed the Xi-Biden meeting, with Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian saying Thursday that Beijing took the US proposal “seriously” and the two sides were in communication.

Beijing was “committed to realizing mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation with the US,” he added.