Bali, Indonesia CNN —
President Joe Biden has personally welcomed his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping for the first time since taking office, initiating high-level talks that could have ramifications around the world.
Biden and Xi approached each other from opposite sides of a hotel lobby and shook hands in front of a row of US and Chinese flags just after 5:30 p.m. local time. They smiled for the cameras and Xi appeared to say – through a translator – “Nice to see you.”
“As leaders of our two nations, I believe we have a shared responsibility to show that China and the United States can manage our differences, prevent competition from ever becoming conflict, and find ways to respond to pressing global issues.” to work together that require our mutual cooperation,” Biden said at the start of the talks.
“I think the world expects China and the United States to play a key role in addressing global challenges,” he said.
The talks between the two leaders on Monday could last just hours but could have ramifications stretching for months or even years as the world’s largest economies head for increasingly hostile relations.
The moments spent here together on the sidelines of the G20 summit will represent only a fraction of the time the two men have spent in each other’s company since 2011. Biden has claimed that as Vice President he spent more than 70 hours with Xi and traveled 17,000 miles with him across China and the United States – both exaggerated but still reflecting a relationship that is now perhaps the most important on the planet.
Biden hopes that a face-to-face reunion after nearly two years of communication only by phone and video conference can lead to a more strategically valuable outcome, even if he enters the talks with little expectation that they will produce anything concrete be able.
“I know Xi Jinping. I’ve spent more time with him than any other world leader,” Biden told reporters a day before his meeting, using another commonly cited — albeit questionable — statistic. “I know him well. He knows me. We have very few misunderstandings.”
It’s not uncommon for Biden to point to the many years the two leaders have known. But for all the times they’ve met when they’ve each served as vice presidents, his meeting on Monday comes at a remarkably low point in US-China relations.
Relations have soured rapidly amid economic disputes and an increasingly militarized standoff over Taiwan. The tensions have led to a decline in cooperation in areas where the two countries once shared interests, such as combating climate change and curbing North Korea’s nuclear program.
In a national security strategy document released last month, Biden identified China for the first time as “America’s most momentous geopolitical challenge” and wrote that the country was the “only competitor intent on transforming the international order, and increasingly the economic, diplomatic, military… and technological power to advance that goal.”
There was almost no expectation among American officials that any of these issues could be resolved simply by putting Biden and Xi in the same room. The prospect of a joint statement to be released afterwards was seen as a non-starter.
The very organization of the meeting itself required US and Chinese officials to establish lines of communication after Beijing furiously shut down most channels following House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan over the summer.
“Every matter related to this meeting, from phone calls to logistics, has been very carefully considered, negotiated and agreed between the two sides,” a senior US government official said.
Planning for Monday’s meeting preceded Pelosi’s trip, and talks between US and Chinese officials continued despite Beijing’s uproar. The process was “serious, highly sustained and professional in the best traditions of US-China diplomacy,” the official said.
A second official acknowledged that talks leading up to the meeting were not always friendly.
“I won’t say the talks weren’t contentious because there are obviously many areas where we have differences and challenges,” the official said. “The dozens of hours we’ve spent speaking to our Chinese counterparts have definitely brought many of these issues to light.”
For his part, Biden takes meetings like this “incredibly seriously” and reads extensively beforehand. In meetings with consultants, he runs through various scenarios of how the meeting could go.
“He goes through ‘if this happens, is this how we should deal with it,'” said the first official. “He understands that in many ways this is the most important bilateral relationship. And it’s his responsibility to manage it well and he takes that very, very seriously.”
Officials said at Monday’s meeting they expected Biden’s senior advisers to accompany him as part of his official delegation. And they said they expected Xi to similarly surround himself with top aides, though the US team entered the meeting expecting to see some new faces on the Chinese side amid an ongoing transition within the inner circle from Xi.
Biden’s advisers have not set a time limit for the meeting, although Jake Sullivan, the US national security adviser, said he expected the talks to last “a couple of hours” but could last longer.
“It is a meeting on the fringes of an international summit. So it’s not itself a kind of summit where they get together in a third country or in Washington and Beijing,” he said. “So we didn’t put a time limit on the conversation.”
Sullivan said Biden would be “super straightforward and direct” at the meeting and expected Xi to be similarly candid in return.
Of greatest interest to Biden and his staff is to build some level of understanding with Xi of how the government views the relationship with China, and to hear from him how he views relations with the United States going forward.
The White House has used the phrase “building ground” to describe the goal of the talks, suggesting Biden hopes to prevent ties from further deteriorating and that he sees room for improvement.
“We just need to figure out where the red lines are and what are the most important things for each of us over the next two years,” Biden told reporters Sunday in Cambodia, where he was attending summits with Asian leaders before his trip to Bali.
Speaking to a small group of reporters in Bali ahead of Biden’s meeting on Monday, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen suggested the face-to-face meeting should serve to stabilize a shaky relationship and expressed hope that it would lay the groundwork for an “intense” bilateral would create economic engagement.
“What I really hope is that, given the President’s bilateral role with President Xi, today we will have more in-depth discussions with our Chinese counterparts about the Chinese economy, global macroeconomic outcomes, and the policies of both the US and China influencing those outcomes.” ”
For Xi, the trip to Bali is also his first trip abroad since the outbreak of the Covid pandemic, which prompted the Chinese government to impose strict lockdowns and draconian restrictions. Xi’s reemergence on the physical world stage also follows the Chinese Communist Party Congress in Beijing, where he secured a norm-breaking third term as party leader.
Just a week ago, most in the White House expected Biden to enter the talks comparatively weakened by Democrat losses in the midterm elections. But better-than-expected results for Democrats left the president feeling like he’s headed into his meetings this week with a tailwind, top advisers say.
“I know I’m coming in stronger, but I don’t need that,” Biden said Saturday of his own improved political fortunes.
US officials anticipating the meeting have stressed that the Biden administration does not intend to come out with any specific “outcomes,” including a joint statement detailing areas of potential cooperation. Rather, the framework aims to provide both Biden and Xi with a significant opportunity to better share their respective countries’ goals and perspectives.
“Xi is not a mystery to President Biden,” a senior administration official told CNN. “He knows him. And he is aware of where Xi is trying to take China. He sees China as a competitor and is confident that the US can win this competition.”
China’s isolation during the pandemic, US officials say, has made understanding Beijing’s intentions abroad relatively more difficult in recent years, as Xi has refused to travel outside of China — but they believe that will soon change.
“We can expect them to appear more confident on the world stage,” the senior government said. But they added, “What that looks like is hard to know right now.”
Sullivan said this week that finally replacing pandemic-era video calls with an in-person meeting for the first time since Biden took office “strategically takes the conversation to another level and allows leaders to examine in more detail what each of them is in.” related to their intentions and priorities.”