The highly anticipated virtual summit between President Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping amid the ongoing tensions over trade, Taiwan, human rights for Uyghur Muslims and military activities will be holding on Monday, people familiar with the matter say.
This would be the first conversation of the two leaders since September and their first meeting since Biden’s inauguration in January although President Biden had hoped for an in-person summit, but Xi hasn’t left China in nearly two years, since the pandemic began.
Biden and Xi spoke by phone for two hours in February and shared a 90-minute phone call in mid-September but neither exchange amounted to much more than their respective positions’ recapitulation.
Sources point that the third meeting was agreed upon last month in Zurich when US national security adviser Jake Sullivan met with Chinese State Councillor Yang Jiechi.
Meanwhile, the US and China unveiled this week a surprise pact on climate, underscoring some areas of cooperation such as concrete and pragmatic regulations in decarbonization, the reduction of methane emissions and a fight again deforestation.
Although it was widely presumed that the announced meeting might address serious issues such as the closing of their respective consulates in Chengdu and Houston, it was later pointed by White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre that talks are part of the ongoing efforts to responsibly manage the competition between the two countries and not about seeking specific deliverables.
Reuters also quoted one Chinese official saying that Beijing would be focusing on positive competition and on seeking common ground with the US in the meeting rather than confrontation.
He noted they see the competition between the US and China like a golf game in which both sides focus on its own better performance and not like a box match in which they try to knock each other out.
The summit also comes in the light of Xi’s recent statement through the Chinese embassy expressing China’s willingness to enhance exchanges and cooperation with the US on regional and global issues and its readiness to properly manage differences.
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