President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping met for long-awaited talks on Monday, their first in-person sit-down since the U.S. president took office.
The talks come as relations between the U.S. and China are at their lowest in decades, marred by disagreements over a host of issues from Taiwan to trade.
The Biden-Xi three-hour meeting could have ripple effects around the world.
The two met on the Indonesian island of Bali ahead of the Group of 20 summit that begins Tuesday. It is set to be fraught with tension over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Biden said in remarks delivered in front of reporters that he was committed to keeping lines of communication open on a personal and government level.
“As the leaders of our two nations, we share responsibility, in my view, to show that China and the United States can manage our differences, prevent competition from … turning into conflict, and to find ways to work together on urgent global issues that require our mutual cooperation.”
He mentioned climate change and food insecurity as problems the world expected their two countries to address.
Xi said the relationship between the two countries was not meeting global expectations, so therefore they need to chart the right course for the U.S.-China relationship.
“We need to find the right direction for the bilateral relationship going forward and elevate the relationship,” Xi said.
“The world expects that China and the United States will properly handle the relationship,” he said, and that he looked forward to working with Biden to bring the relationship back on the right track.
The two leaders’ talks Monday could have consequences stretching months or even years as the world’s largest economies veer toward increasingly hostile relations.
Biden hopes coming face-to-face again after nearly two years of communicating only by phone and video conference can yield a more strategically valuable result, even if he enters the talks with little expectation they can produce anything concrete.
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