The US and China on Friday agreed to work toward setting up a meeting between the two countries’ leaders next month, after US President Joe Biden met Beijing’s top diplomat at the White House.
Biden has invited Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to San Francisco next month for the APEC summit at a time of tense relations between the two powers. Xi has not yet confirmed he would attend.
After Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) held talks with Biden and other senior US officials in Washington, the White House said that both countries had agreed to keep up “high-level diplomacy” to try to smooth ties.
Photo: Reuters
The two sides “reaffirmed” that they were “working together towards a meeting between President Biden and President Xi Jinping in San Francisco in November,” the White House said in a statement.
A senior administration official said the White House was leaving it to Beijing to confirm that Xi would come, but “we are making preparations for just such a meeting.”
An official readout of talks between Wang and US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan released by Beijing confirmed “both sides agreed to make joint efforts to realize a meeting between the two heads of state.”
In a separate readout of his meeting with Biden, Wang was quoted as saying that his visit was aimed at “working to stop the decline in China-US relations, stabilize them, and bring them back to the track of sound and steady development.”
Biden told Wang that Washington and Beijing must “manage competition in the relationship responsibly and maintain open lines of communication,” the White House said in a statement.
Wang has been on a two-day visit to Washington during which he also met with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
After meeting with Blinken on Thursday, Wang acknowledged that differences would still come up, but said China would respond “calmly.”
Biden and Xi have had no contact since a meeting in Bali, Indonesia, in November last year. Relations have been tense for years between the world’s top two economies as they vie for influence in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond, and as Beijing boosts cooperation with Russia in a bid to reduce US dominance.
A particular point of contention has been Taiwan.
“The biggest threat to peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait is ‘Taiwan independence,’ and the biggest challenge to China-US relations is also ‘Taiwan independence,’ which must be resolutely opposed,” Wang said in the readout of his meeting with Sullivan.
In his meeting with Biden, he also stressed the centrality of the “one China” principle to US-China ties, according to the readout.
A senior US government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, quoted Blinken as telling Wang that the US opposes any unilateral changes to the “status quo” in the Taiwan Strait, and that the US would work to maintain peace and stability in the Strait.
Additional reporting by staff writer
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