US President Joe Biden will meet on Monday with President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of next week’s Group of 20 Summit in Bali, Indonesia, a face-to-face meeting that comes amid increasingly strained China-US relations, the White House announced on Thursday.

It will be the first in-person meeting between the leaders of the world’s two biggest economies since Biden became president in January 2021 and comes weeks after Xi won a third five-year term as Communist Party leader during the party’s national congress.

The Foreign Ministry confirmed on Friday that Xi will attend the G20 summit in Indonesia from November 14 to 17.

He will then travel to Thailand from November 17 to 19 to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) summit.

Foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told a regular press briefing Xi will meet Biden and his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron next week in Bali, as well as Senegal's Macky Sall and Argentina's Alberto Fernandez.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement the leaders will meet to “discuss efforts to maintain and deepen lines of communication" between the two countries and to "responsibly manage competition and work together where our interests align, especially on transnational challenges that affect the international community.”

The White House has been working with Chinese officials over the last several weeks to arrange the meeting. Biden on Wednesday told reporters that he intended to discuss with Xi growing tensions between Washington and Beijing over Taiwan, trade policies, Beijing’s relationship with Russia and more.

“What I want to do with him when we talk is lay out what each of our red lines are and understand what he believes to be in the critical national interests of China, what I know to be the critical interests of the United States,” Biden said. “And determine whether or not they conflict with one another.”

The White House sought to downplay expectations for the meeting, telling reporters there was no joint communique or deliverables anticipated from the sit-down.

“I don’t think you should look at this meeting as one in which there’s going to be specific deliverables announced," White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said. "Rather the two leaders are going to give direction to their teams to work on a number of areas, both areas where we have differences and areas where we can work together.”

Meanwhile, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he'd ask Xi to lift billions of dollars in trade barriers if the two leaders hold their first bilateral meeting this month.

Albanese was speaking in Sydney before departing Australia on Friday for an East Asia Summit in Cambodia, followed by the G20 Summit, then an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum meeting in Thailand.

A face-to-face meeting between the Chinese and Australian leaders would mark a major reset in a bilateral relationship that plumbed new depths under the nine-year rule of Australia’s previous conservative government.

Beijing had banned minister-to-minister contacts and imposed a series of official and unofficial trade barriers on products including wine, coal, beef, seafood and barley in recent years that cost Australian exporters 20 billion Australian dollars (US$13 billion) a year.

Albanese said a meeting with Xi was “not locked in at this point in time.” But China lifting economic sanctions was the first priority in returning to normal relations, he said.

“We have some AU$20 billion of economic sanctions against Australia. That is not in Australia’s interest in terms of our jobs and the economy, but it’s also not in China’s interest,” Albanese told reporters.

“Australia has world class products – in seafood, in meat, in wine, in other products that we export to China. It’s in China’s interest to receive those products, it’s in Australia’s interest to export them. So I’m very hopeful – we’ll continue to put our case that these sanctions are not justified, that they need to be removed,” Albanese added. (AP & AFP)
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Last updated: 2022-11-11 HKT 16:04