Biden to meet Chinese President Xi at a virtual summit next week with Beijing building up their military and White House accusing them of suppressing the COVID origins probe, report claims
- No specific date has been announced, but two officials said the virtual sit-down is set for next week
- The meeting that won't seek 'specific deliverables' comes amid China's worsening encroachment on Taiwan and their 'genocide' of the Uighur people
- It also comes after numerous missile tests and unanswered questions on the coronavirus pandemic's origins
- The White House has repeatedly stressed that it welcomes a relationship with China of 'competition, not conflict'
President Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping are reportedly set to hold their virtual summit next week, amid China's concerning military developments and accusations of covering up the origins of Covid-19.
No specific date has been announced, but two officials told Bloomberg the virtual sit-down is set for next week.
The session is not expected to address a reopening of the US consulate in Chengdu or the Chinese consulate in Houston, both of which were shut down in a tit-for-tat feud last July.
The White House has already said the talk will not deliver anything specific.
'This is part of our ongoing efforts to responsibly manage the competition between our countries,' White House deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Monday, and is 'not about seeking specific deliverables.'
The meeting that won't seek 'specific deliverables' comes amid China's worsening encroachment on Taiwan, their 'genocide' of the Uighur people in the Xinjiang province, numerous missile tests and unanswered questions on the pandemic's origins.
Biden and Xi shake hands at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing in 2013
Biden has often touted his relationship with Xi as vice president from 2009 to 2017. Here he is pictured toasting a non-alcholic beverage with Xi at a Department of State luncheon in 2015
The White House has struck a diplomatic tone, repeatedly stressing that it welcomes a relationship with China of 'competition, not conflict.' Biden has often touted his relationship with Xi as vice president from 2009 to 2017.
Last week, Biden hit China, the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gasses, for sitting out the United Nations climate conference, COP26.
'They have the lost the ability to influence people around the world here in COP,' Biden said.
'I've made it clear, this is competition. It does not have to be conflict,' Biden said, laying out his relationship with Xi.
'There is no reason there need be conflict. But I've also indicated to him … that we expect him to play by the rules of the road.'
Tensions have increased around the island of Taiwan in recent weeks. China has stepped up military flights around the self-governed island and used increasingly bellicose language.
Biden ruffled China's feathers in a CNN townhall last month when he said the US would 'absolutely' defend Taiwan from an attack by China. The White House later walked by that statement.
China's military capabilities have become cause for concern for the US
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At the same time, the U.S. has made clear that will continue to help Taiwan defend itself.
Biden said the US was 'not going to change our attitude' on matters like sea lanes, international air space and cybersecurity.
'I'm not looking for, I don't anticipate there to be a need for armed conflict.'
China now has the world's largest navy and is preparing to launch a new high-tech aircraft carrier by February, the Pentagon has revealed.
China's growing threat was underscored further as satellite pictures emerged of mock-ups of a US aircraft carrier and destroyer in its northwestern desert, believed to be used in wargames amid rising tensions between the nuclear-armed nations.
The Pentagon this month issued a report saying China is expanding its nuclear force much faster than U.S. officials predicted just a year ago.
That appears designed to enable Beijing to match or surpass U.S. global power by mid-century, the report said.
Meanwhile, the US is setting up its own version of the 'Iron Dome' on the Pacific Ocean island of Guam as it begins testing the missile-defense system on the heels of flexing its military might.
Guam - the closest US military base to China, at about 3,000 miles from the mainland - has a population of over 190,000 American citizens and servicemen.
That plan after China launched a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile that circled the earth in August. The launch caught Washington off guard.
China has resisted efforts from the western world to investigate the virus's origins, and has been accused of obscuring the truth around the early weeks of the pandemic, and when they first discovered the had a new virus on their hands.
After a May Wall Street Journal report finding that three researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology were sickened enough to seek hospital care in November 2019, Biden ordered the intelligence community to conduct a 90-day review of coronavirus' origins. The report came back inconclusive, though Republicans in particular have argued evidence points to the lab leak theory.
Documents leaked to The Intercept in September revealed that the US' National Institutes of Health indirectly funded 'gain-of-function' research, which involves making a virus more lethal or virulent in order to study it. The experiments involved modifying coronaviruses distinct from Covid-19 which were made to be more infectious.
