White House confirms Biden will meet Xi in San Francisco next Wednesday: U.S. and Chinese leaders set for crunch talks on Taiwan and rising tensions since spy balloon was shot down
President Joe Biden will meet Chinese President Xi Jinping in person for the first time in a year on Wednesday, the White House announced.
The two leaders will meet on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in San Francisco Bay.
Topics for their meeting are expected to include the war between Israel and Hamas against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, North Korea’s ties with Russia, Taiwan, the Indo-Pacific, human rights, fentanyl, artificial intelligence, as well as ‘fair’ trade and economic relations. , government officials said.
President Joe Biden, right, and Chinese President Xi Jinping shake hands before a meeting on the sidelines of the G20 summit in November 2022
‘Nothing will be held back; everything is on the table,” a senior Biden administration official said.
‘We are clear about this. We know that attempts to shape or reform China over the past decades have failed. But we expect China to continue to exist for the rest of our lives and to remain a major player on the world stage.”
The two men last met at a G20 meeting in November 2022 in Bali. They haven’t spoken since.
During their meeting in San Francisco, Biden is expected to raise the sensitive issue of Chinese influence operations in America, along with the status of American citizens who Washington says are being wrongly detained in China.
Since their last meeting, the US has raised concerns about Chinese espionage in the US. In February, a Chinese spy balloon made its way across the United States until a U.S. fighter jet shot it down off the coast of South Carolina.