U.S. President Joe Biden on Monday told Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping they were both responsible for preventing their superpower competition from turning into conflict, in rare talks aimed at thawing ties that are at their worst in decades.
Ahead of their first in-person talks since Biden became president, the two leaders smiled and shook hands warmly in front of their national flags at a luxury hotel on Indonesia’s Bali island, a day before a Group of 20 (G20) summit set to be fraught with tension over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“It’s just great to see you,” Biden told Xi, as he put an arm around him, before a meeting that lasted a little over three hours.
However, Biden brought up a number of difficult topics during the three hour meeting, according to a White House readout, including raising U.S. objections to China’s “coercive and increasingly aggressive actions toward Taiwan”, Beijing’s “non-market economic practices”, and practices in “Xinjiang, Tibet, and Hong Kong, and human rights more broadly”.