US President Joe Biden will meet Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in San Francisco in November, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre announced on Tuesday (local time). She said that Biden looks forward to the meeting.
While addressing a press briefing on Tuesday (local time), Karine Jean-Pierre said, “We’ve been talking about the President, who said he was looking forward to meeting with President Xi. And so, I’m not going to get into details about this meeting that’s going to happen in November next month. It’s going to be in San Francisco. It’s going to be a constructive meeting. The President’s looking forward to it.”
When asked again if the meeting was happening, Jean-Pierre responded, “Yes.” However, she refused to divulge details regarding the agenda of the meeting.
Other reporters then pressed Jean-Pierre on whether she just confirmed the meeting will happen. Jean-Pierre said, “What I’m saying is that we’re aiming to have a constructive conversation meeting between the leaders in San Francisco in November so that’s what I’m saying. That’s what is going to happen in San Francisco in the next month, in November. We are having a constructive conversation in San Francisco. I think I just confirmed it.”
Karine Jean-Pierre said that the US has been clear with its policy with respect to China and called it “intense competition.” She said that Biden will have a “tough but important” conversation with Xi Jinping. She spoke about the earlier meetings held between US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his Chinese counterpart.
In the press briefing, Jean-Pierre said, “We have been clear; our policy and how we move forward with China haven’t changed. This is intense competition, right? We have said that we want to move forward with China. We understand that intense competition means intense diplomacy; that’s what you’re going to see. That’s what the president is going to be doing–having a tough but important conversation.”
“I am not going to get into any kind of decision made on this. This is going to be about diplomatic conversations. We have seen about three secretaries go to China and have these diplomatic conversations. We saw Secretary Antony Blinken, and we also saw National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan having important diplomatic conversations with their counterparts in China. This is an important relationship. Again, this is about competition; that’s what we want to see with China and this is going to be an important diplomatic conversation.”
The meeting comes on the heels of a meeting Biden held with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Washington last week. The White House said Biden “emphasized that both the United States and China need to manage competition in the relationship responsibly and maintain open lines of communication,” and he “underscored that the United States and China must work together to address global challenges.”
Joe Biden last met Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the G20 Summit in Bali in 2022. The ties between India and China have been strained since US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan, which China claims is part of its territory.
The US-China relationship began to sour in 2018 when the Trump administration slapped hefty tariffs on USD 50 billion worth of Chinese goods. It deteriorated further over a range of issues, including rights abuses, the South China Sea, Taiwan, technology and the COVID-19 pandemic.
