PremiumUS President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping will sit down for a first face-to-face interaction since the former took office
US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping will sit down for a first in-person meeting today since Biden took over the White House. The meeting comes at a time when hostilities between the two countries have been rising over the past few months.
The two leaders will meet amid bolstered standing at home. While Biden is coming off a midterm election where Democrats managed to gain control of the senate and could boost their standing further if they win a run-off election in Georgia next month. Xi won a historic third term in office at the Communist Party's national congress in October.
“His circumstance has changed, to state the obvious, at home. I know I’m coming in stronger," President Biden said in a reference to the midterm election victory.
The relations between two countries have nosedived with Taiwan emerging as the major issue of contention between them. Ever since US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan in August, the two countries have witnessed rising hostilities. China claims Taiwan as a part of its own territory and does not rule out the use of force to take back control of the island while Taiwan claims itself as an independent democratic nation.
Following Pelosi's visit, China cut off working-level cooperation with the US in areas such as military relations and climate change and carried out military drills around the island. In retaliation, President Biden vowed many times to support Taiwan militarily even as the US administration claimed that the official policy of '“strategic ambiguity" towards Taiwan remained.
Biden and Xi will meet in Bali on the sidelines of the Group of 20(G20) summit of world leaders White House officials and Chinese counterparts have spent weeks negotiating the meeting's details, which will take place at Xi's hotel with translators providing simultaneous interpretation via headsets.
Both leaders would want to find areas of cooperation among their countries despite the many challenges. Although China's relationship with Russia, its stance on the nine-month-long Ukraine conflict, the rising military posture of China's ally North Korea and control over Taiwan are some issues that are likely to dominate the discourse during the meeting.
While talking about the meeting, President Biden told reporters in Cambodia, “We have very little misunderstanding. We just got to figure out where the red lines are and ... what are the most important things to each of us going into the next two years."
This is not the first time that the two leaders met, they first met during Biden's stint as the Vice President. The US President has emphasised his relationship with Xi both domestically and internationally to show a dominant posture. He recently used his conversations with the Chinese President during the Midterm elections to garner votes for his party.
(With agency inputs)