Biden to Meet Xi in San Francisco Next Month, White House Confirms

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre answers questions during the daily press briefing at the White House on March 3, 2023 in Washington, DC. Win McNamee/Getty Images

President Joe Biden will meet with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in the upcoming San Francisco summit, the White House has confirmed.

“We have said that we want to move forward with China,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a back-and-forth press briefing on Oct. 31. “Intense competition means intense diplomacy.”

“That’s what you’re going to see. That’s what the president is going to be doing, and having a tough conversation but important conversation.”

There was confusion in the room as to whether the press secretary meant such a meeting is on the agenda.

“I think I just confirmed it,” Ms. Jean-Pierre said after multiple reporters asked for clarification.

“It’s going to be in San Francisco. It’s going to be a constructive meeting. The President’s looking forward to it, and I think that should answer your question,” she said, adding that she wasn’t going to “get ahead of the process.”

A senior Biden administration official on Tuesday gave more context to Ms. Jean-Pierre’s remarks.

“There is an agreement in principle to meet in San Francisco in November. We are still working through important details needed to finalize those plans,” the official said, according to Reuters.

The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit that runs from Nov. 11 through 17 will mark the first time the Chinese leader has set foot on U.S. soil in five years, and the first U.S. meeting between the two heads of state since President Biden took office.

The two had last spoken in November 2022 on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in Bali, Indonesia, where President Biden expressed hope they can “find ways to work together on urgent global issues that require our mutual cooperation” and prevent competition from turning into conflict.

Mr. Xi, in response, said that the “China-U.S. relationship is in such a situation that we all care a lot about it.”

The confirmation of the meeting had followed high-profile exchanges among top Chinese and U.S. officials in recent months.

Most recently, top Chinese diplomat Wang Yi flew to Washington for a three-day visit, meeting with President Biden along with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan.

Mr. Wang had cast doubt on the prospect of a Biden-Xi meeting two days earlier, saying that the path toward the summit won’t be “smooth sailing” and that they can’t rely on “autopilot” to make it happen.

The Biden administration has put a strong emphasis on open communications with China.

Mr. Blinken, during talks with his Chinese counterpart, has pressed again for resuming military-to-military channels.

“We both have a profound stake in avoiding miscommunication and miscalculation,” a senior administration official told reporters in an Oct. 28 background briefing.

On Oct. 24, a Chinese fighter jet came within 10 feet of colliding with a U.S. bomber over the South China Sea, according to the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, which criticized the Chinese pilot for flying “in an unsafe and unprofessional manner.”

That incident itself has “just underscored the importance of being able to talk to each other at working levels as well as at senior levels,” the U.S. official said in the Oct. 28 briefing.

Mr. Xi’s decision to skip the G20 Summit in New Delhi last month has disappointed President Biden, although he said at the time that he was “going to meet with him.”

Bilateral tensions have simmered even as the two countries attempt to smooth ties. In February, backlash over a Chinese spy balloon that flew across the continental United States had temporarily stalled Mr. Blinken’s trip to China. Later in May, a Chinese state-backed hacking group infiltrated accounts of high-level administration officials, stealing 60,000 from the State Department.

Recalling the spy balloon incident in June, President Biden had called Mr. Xi a “dictator,” saying that the Chinese leader had become upset when he shot down the balloon because “he didn’t know it was there.”

Taiwan, human rights, fentanyl precursors from China, and the detention of Americans in the country have repeatedly come up during the recent bilateral meetings.

The ongoing Israel-Hamas war may deepen the U.S.-China divide. Mirroring its position on Ukraine, China has refused to explicitly condemn Hamas following the group’s attack on Israel, a response to which Israel has expressed “deep disappointment.”