The Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, and the President of the United States, Joe Biden, met on Monday for long-awaited talks. The talks come at a time when relations between the two countries are at their lowest point in decades, marred by disagreements over a variety of issues ranging from Taiwan to trade.
On the Indonesian island of Bali, where they were conducting their first in-person conversations since Biden became president, the two got together in advance of a Group of Twenty (G20) conference that will take place on Tuesday and is expected to be laden with tension because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
They exchanged friendly handshakes in front of a row of Chinese and American flags in a ballroom at the luxury hotel Mulia on Bali’s Nusa Dua bay. They both flashed broad smiles as they did so.
Biden told Xi, as he wrapped his arm around him, “It’s just great to see you,” and he added, in comments given in front of reporters, that he was dedicated to keeping lines of communication open on both a personal and a government level.
“As the leaders of our two nations, we share responsibility, in my view, to show that China and the United States can manage our differences, prevent competition from … turning into conflict, and to find ways to work together on urgent global issues that require our mutual cooperation.” He mentioned issues such as climate change and food insecurity as challenges that the world anticipated their two countries to solve.
In his response to Biden, Xi said that the relationship between their two nations fell short of satisfying the expectations of the international community.
“So we need to chart the right course for the China-US relationship. We need to find the right direction for the bilateral relationship going forward and elevate the relationship,” Xi stated.
“The world expects that China and the United States will properly handle the relationship,” he said, adding that he looked forward to working with Biden to get the relationship back on the right track. “The world expects that China and the United States will properly handle the relationship,” he said.
Although members of each leader’s delegation donned masks to protect themselves from COVID, the leaders themselves did not do so.
Issues that will also hang over the G20 that is being conducted without Russian President Vladimir Putin in attendance, such as North Korea’s nuclear aspirations, are anticipated to be the primary subjects of conversation between the two groups. Taiwan and Ukraine are also scheduled to be discussed.
