WASHINGTON – President Biden will meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping next month at an international summit in San Francisco, the White House confirmed Tuesday.
It will be Biden’s second in-person visit with Xi as president — after last year’s meeting in Bali — and the Chinese leader’s first visit to the United States since he visited former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in 2017.
“It’s happening,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at a regular White House briefing on Friday. “It will be in San Francisco.”
The Biden administration previously said it was working toward a meeting with Xi at the November 11-17 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said at a press conference Monday that it was likely Xi would cancel the trip.
The November visit will be President Biden’s second in-person meeting with Xi Jinping after last year in Bali.REUTERS Biden’s relationship with Beijing has deteriorated since a year ago when he referred to Xi as a “dictator” at a June fundraiser.AFP via Getty Images
“I want to emphasize that it is not a normal voyage to San Francisco, nor can we leave it to autopilot to get us there,” Wang said. “Both sides need to earnestly return to what was agreed in Bali, act on the mutual understanding of the two presidents, overcome distractions, overcome obstacles, develop mutual understanding and collect results.”
Biden often recalls traveling with Xi during his eight-year vice presidency and routinely says that his priority is to ensure that “competition” in US-China relations does not turn into “conflict.”
Republican critics routinely blame Biden for failing to take a stronger stance in pressuring Xi on issues such as stopping China’s illegal fentanyl exports, which have caused the highest number of US drug overdose deaths on record, and being transparent about the origins of COVID-19, which has killing more than 1.1 million Americans.
The president did not publicly mention any of the issues during his opening speech at the Bali summit.
Biden’s relationship with Beijing hit a low point last year when he referred to Xi as a “dictator” at a June fundraiser and following the February shooting down of a Chinese spy balloon off the coast of South Carolina after it crossed the continental United States.
Biden often reminisced about traveling with Xi during his eight years as vice president. AP Republican critics have blamed Biden for not taking tougher action against China’s illegal fentanyl exports.REUTERS
House Republicans last month launched an impeachment inquiry into Biden’s role in the foreign business dealings of his son Hunter Biden and brother James Biden, including a pair of ventures with Chinese government-linked companies that generated millions of dollars in income for the first family.
Biden met with his relatives’ partners in both Chinese government-related ventures and at one point got a 10% cut of the ventures that later netted his son and brother about $6.1 million.
House investigators recently obtained James and Hunter Biden’s bank records using a subpoena and are investigating whether the president received any foreign government-related income.
Trump in 2017 hosted Xi at his club in Palm Beach, Fla., and said he projected strength by ordering airstrikes on Syria while they shared “the most beautiful chocolate cake.”
It will be Xi’s first visit to the United States since he visited Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago in 2017.REUTERS
Trump then launched a tariff-driven trade war against China in an effort to force a trade deal to boost the US economy. That effort was disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, which emerged in Wuhan, China, after a possible leak from a laboratory conducting risky research.
Biden has so far maintained Trump’s tariffs on Chinese goods.
Categories: Trending
Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
