US President Joe Biden is meeting Chinese leader Xi Jinping for the first time in a year on Wednesday, for talks that could ease friction between the rival superpowers over military conflicts, drug trafficking and artificial intelligence, Reuters reports.
However, deep progress on the wide gaps separating the world’s economic superpowers may have to wait for another day.
Officials on both sides of the Pacific have lowered expectations as Biden and Xi will discuss Taiwan, the South China Sea, the Israel-Hamas war, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, North Korea and human rights, areas where the leaders have been unable to resolve longstanding differences. .
Biden and Xi arrived in San Francisco yesterday, where they were supposed to hold a meeting on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit.
Leaders from the 21-nation group of countries and hundreds of chief executives are meeting amid China’s economic weakness, Beijing’s simmering territorial disputes with its neighbors and a Middle East conflict that has divided the United States from its allies.
Asked how he would measure success at the talks with Xi, Biden said:
“To get back on a normal course, corresponding and being able to pick up the phone and talk to one another in a crisis, and being able to make sure that our militaries still have contact with one another.”
Biden said the United States does not want to decouple from China but wants to change the economic relationship for the better.
He said it would benefit all if the average citizen in China had a decent-paying job.
“But I’m not going to continue to sustain support for a position where in order to invest in China, we have to turn over all our trade secrets,” he said.
