by Trevor Hunnicutt
WOODSIDE, Calif. (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping met on Wednesday for the first time in a year with the aim of easing tensions between the two global superpowers over issues including conflict. armed forces, artificial intelligence and drug trafficking.
Joe Biden welcomed Xi Jinping to the Filoli estate, located nearly fifty kilometers south of San Francisco where a summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) forum is being held.
At the start of their meeting, the White House tenant declared that the United States and China must ensure that their competition does not “turn into conflict” and manage their relationship in a “responsible” manner.
Xi Jinping told his American counterpart that a lot had happened since their last physical meeting last year in Bali. “The world has emerged from the COVID pandemic but still remains under its considerable impact. The global economy is recovering but its momentum remains slow,” said the Chinese president.
Describing China-US relations as “the most important bilateral relations in the world”, Xi Jinping said it was up to him and Joe Biden to “take important responsibilities for the two peoples, for the world and for the story”.
“For two big countries like China and the United States, turning their backs on each other is not an option,” said the Chinese president, adding that it was “unrealistic” for one camp to “reshape” the other and emphasizing the serious consequences of a confrontation for the two countries.
Tensions between Washington and Beijing increased at the start of the year when the United States shot down an alleged Chinese spy balloon above its territory, an incident regretted by China which rejected the American accusations.
High-level ministerial meetings have been organized in recent months with the aim of avoiding an escalation of tensions. The head of American diplomacy, Antony Blinken, notably visited China in June.
If Joe Biden and Xi Jinping intend to calm bilateral relations, no real progress is expected immediately on the issues on which the two countries have long diverged – Taiwan, the war in Ukraine, North Korea, human rights humans… It is expected that the two leaders will also discuss the conflict between Israel and Hamas.
Building on the personal relationship he established with Xi Jinping before entering the White House in January 2021, Joe Biden is counting on direct diplomatic exchanges with his counterpart to save increasingly hostile bilateral ties.
The American president should, among other things, ask Xi Jinping to use Beijing’s influence to encourage Iran to refrain from any provocative acts or to encourage allied militias to fuel the conflict in the Middle East.
American representatives also said they expected concrete measures to restore military conversations between the two camps, broken off by China in response to the visit to Taiwan in August 2022 by Nancy Pelosi, then Speaker of the American House of Representatives. .
(Reporting Trevor Hunnicutt, with Steve Holland, Michael Martina, Martin Pollard, Jeff Mason and David Brunnstrom; French version Jean Terzian)
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