AFPChinese President Xi and US President Biden during the G20 summit in Indonesia last year
NOS Nieuws•vandaag, 18:01
US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping will meet in California next Wednesday. The White House has announced this. They will discuss, among other things, trade, tensions around Taiwan and urgent world issues such as the war in Ukraine and the war between Israel and Hamas.
There has been talk for weeks about a possible meeting between the two leaders. On Wednesday, both leaders will be at the APEC summit in San Francisco, which starts tomorrow. During that summit, countries on the Pacific Ocean discuss mutual economic cooperation.
A White House press secretary says Biden and Xi will discuss the “importance of open communication” and “responsible competition.” It was almost a year to the day on Wednesday since the two world leaders last met. That was on November 14, 2022 at the G20 summit in Indonesia.
Spionageballon
Since then, the relationship between the two has cooled. At the beginning of this year, friction arose over a Chinese “spy balloon” that flew into American airspace. The Americans shot the balloon out of the sky. China denied it was a spy balloon and called the downing of the balloon an excessive action.
Months later, in June, President Biden called his Chinese counterpart a dictator at a meeting in California. In a speech about the balloon incident, Biden said that Xi was ashamed of the fuss surrounding the balloon. “The reason why Xi Jinping was so upset when I shot that balloon down is because he didn’t know that balloon was there,” Biden stated. He added that “it is a great embarrassment to dictators if they don’t know what is happening.”
Biden made the statements a few days after a visit by US Secretary of State Blinken to China. That visit was aimed at improving the relationship between the countries.
War Israel Hamas
The Taiwan issue, the geopolitical struggle in the South China Sea, human rights issues and divergent positions on the war in Ukraine are also important points of contention between the major powers. China and the US also have a different stance on the war between Israel and Hamas. Xi supports Arab countries and has not condemned Hamas’ attack. The US stands firmly behind Israel.
The White House does not expect the meeting to lead to any surprising announcements, an American source told the AP. He thinks that the differences of opinion between the countries will not be resolved immediately. The main hope is that the meeting will strengthen the relationship between the two countries and that more meetings can take place in the future, the source said.
2023-11-10 17:01:39
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