The News
US President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping will meet Saturday on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Lima, Peru, in what will likely be their final meeting before Biden leaves office.
The leaders are expected to cover various high-stakes issues, including counternarcotics, Taiwan, and Chinese hacking of US telecommunications. Casting a shadow over the meeting will be the recent US presidential election: Chinese officials are coming to terms with the prospect of an escalating trade dispute with the incoming administration after President-elect Donald Trump pledged to raise sweeping tariffs on Chinese imports.
Biden plans to discuss the progress the US and China have made in countering fentanyl and improving military-to-military communications during his time in office, as well as raising sources of tension in the relationship, a senior administration official told reporters.
The US president plans to express concerns over China’s support for Russia’s defense industrial base, Chinese efforts to hack US critical infrastructure, and China’s actions around Taiwan and in the South China Sea, the official said. He’ll also raise the deployment of North Korean soldiers alongside Russians fighting in Ukraine.
Know More
It’s unclear whether the US presidential election results will extensively come up between the two leaders, but Trump’s trade plans and his hawkish China staffing choices will undoubtedly color the meeting.
While Trump has promised a seachange from Biden’s administration across several areas of government, their administrations may ultimately have more in common when it comes to economic and national security policy toward China.
“This is a tough, complicated relationship between the US and China and so whatever the next administration decides, they are going to need to find ways to manage that tough, complicated relationship,” the senior Biden administration official said, declining to discuss the incoming president’s plans. Biden, the official added, will use this meeting “to reflect on how this administration has approached it.”
Biden and Xi have met in person twice over the course of the former’s four-year term; their last encounter was a year ago on the sidelines of the APEC summit in San Francisco.
