U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping will hold a long-telegraphed meeting on Nov. 16 on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Peru, according to senior U.S. administration officials.
This will be the first convening of the two leaders since last November, and it is expected to be the last of the Biden presidency. The U.S. officials, who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity under terms set by the administration, said no major new deliverables are on the table; instead, the two leaders will discuss the agenda they set out at their meeting on the sidelines of last year’s APEC summit in California.
U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping will hold a long-telegraphed meeting on Nov. 16 on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Peru, according to senior U.S. administration officials.
This will be the first convening of the two leaders since last November, and it is expected to be the last of the Biden presidency. The U.S. officials, who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity under terms set by the administration, said no major new deliverables are on the table; instead, the two leaders will discuss the agenda they set out at their meeting on the sidelines of last year’s APEC summit in California.
In the year since, the United States and China have managed to forge new stability through increased diplomatic contact. They have used that stability to push forward cooperation on military-to-military communication, climate change, fentanyl, and artificial intelligence, even while both countries have continued to take assertive actions in other areas, from technology restrictions to Taiwan.
With President-elect Donald Trump taking office in January, though, that careful balance of cooperation and competition is all but guaranteed to be cast aside in exchange for a more mercantilist approach.
The Biden administration’s priority at this weekend’s meeting seems to be keeping relations as smooth as possible until then. “We’ll expect to try to continue to ensure that we’ve got those channels working—law enforcement and [military-to-military] in particular—which we see as critical to underpinning stability in the relationship in the period ahead,” a senior administration official said.
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