US President Joe Biden and China’s President Xi Jinping will hold their first bilateral meeting since Biden took office tomorrow ahead of the start of the G-20 summit in Indonesia. According to the US government, the meeting on the holiday island of Bali should be a “strategic, profound and substantial discussion”. China-US relations are at a low ebb.
Points of contention are Beijing’s backing for Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Ukraine war, the trade war, tensions over democratic Taiwan and China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea.
No face-to-face meeting yet
Before the meeting with Xi, Biden had already announced that he wanted to raise the issues of Taiwan and Russia. Yesterday, at the summit of ASEAN heads of state and government in Cambodia’s capital Phnom Penh, the US President emphasized that he wanted to counteract China’s growing influence in Asia.
Biden and Xi had spoken to each other five times in the past two years, but have not met in person since Biden moved into the White House in January 2021. The G-20 summit of major economic powerhouses is scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday on the Indonesian island of Bali.