Biden-Xi Meeting a ‘Possibility’ in November, But No Agreement Yet, President Says

U.S. President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden depart the White House in Washington en route to Florida on Sept. 2, 2023. Anna Rose Layden/Getty Images

President Joe Biden is seeking a meeting with Chinese communist leader Xi Jinping in November, but no deal has been finalized to ensure that it happens.

“There is no such meeting set up, but it is a possibility,” President Biden told reporters during an Oct. 6 briefing.

The Biden administration has sought such a meeting for months and is working to get the two leaders together during a forum of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation group in San Francisco next month. Officials remain hesitant about details, however, and there is no confirmation that Mr. Xi has agreed to the one-on-one.

Ties between China and the United States, the world’s largest economies, have reached historic lows under the two leaders. U.S. officials see a Biden-Xi meeting as an essential tool for warming the fraught relations between the two powers.

The meeting would only be the second in-person contact between the leaders during President Biden’s administration. The first was held on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Indonesia in November 2022. The pair also met virtually or by phone five times before that.

Failing to Find Common Ground

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which rules China as a single-party state, cut off cross-military communications used to deescalate conflict between the two countries last year, and has systematically sought to insulate its economy from U.S. power.

The Biden administration has repeatedly attempted to kick-start a healing of relations with a flurry of diplomatic contacts between the two powers, though none have produced much effect.

Most recently, Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Kritenbrink and Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Sun Weidong met in Washington on Sept. 28.

On Sept. 18, Secretary of State Antony Blinken met Mr. Xi’s No. 2, Han Zheng, in New York, and U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan met Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Malta.

The great bulk of meetings, however, have required U.S. officials to travel to China where they have generally not been well received.

Such was the case with visits by Blinken in June, by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen in July, and by Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo in August. Each of those contacts failed to produce tangible agreements between the two powers.

CCP Wants to Portray US as ‘Supplicant’

Dan Blumenthal, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said the CCP wanted U.S. officials to appear “supplicant” in Beijing and was largely refusing to meet U.S. officials on equal footing.

“We’re sending cabinet officials to China to make these kinds of attempts but they don’t return with very much,” Mr. Blumenthal said during an Oct. 5 talk at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“They don’t return with very much except for these lectures and… [the] ire of the Chinese.”

Likewise, Rep. Young Kim (R-Calif.), who chairs the Subcommittee on Indo-Pacific at the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said the Biden administration was needlessly giving concessions to the regime.

“The Biden administration’s repeated concessions to simply get a meeting with CCP are emboldening the CCP to continue its reckless behavior,” she told The Epoch Times.

The CCP appears content with that perception, too.

In September, the regime’s top spy agency said that any meeting between Mr. Xi and President Biden would be dependent on President Biden “showing sufficient sincerity” to the regime.

Eva Fu and Reuters contributed to this report.