WASHINGTON: US President Joe Biden will meet with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping this week on the margins of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) in Lima, Peru, the White House said on Wednesday.
“This will be the third in-person meeting between the two leaders since President Biden came into office, and their final meeting as president,” Biden’s National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said at a press briefing.
“Throughout his time in office, President Biden and his team have worked to effectively and responsibly manage the competition between the United States and the PRC,” said Sullivan, using initials of the People’s Republic of China.
Sullivan said Biden’s approach to China has prioritized investments in sources of American strength at home, including growing the middle class and ensuring that America maintains its industrial capacity and its innovation edge in fields such as semiconductors and artificial intelligence.
“He has strengthened our alliances around the world and especially in the Indo-Pacific. He has boosted American deterrence, and he’s ensured that America remains the partner of choice for countries both in the region and across the world,” he said.
Sullivan also said Biden has demonstrated that the US and China can manage their differences and prevent competition from veering into conflict or confrontation.
“He’s done that by ensuring the maintenance of open lines of communication at the leader level, at the military to military level, and at every level of our respective governments,” Sullivan told reporters.
“And we’ve also worked to advance cooperation where our interests align, including on counternarcotics and climate change, which is what the people of our two countries expect and what the world expects,” he said.
“And this meeting between President Biden and President Xi will be an opportunity to ensure a smooth transition and also to continue to keep those channels of communication open, including those especially critical military to military channels of communication open,” Sullivan added.
The two leaders previously met in the Indonesian city of Bali in 2022 at the G20 summit and in California near San Francisco in 2023 on the margins of the APEC summit.
The meeting will take place as Biden aims to stabilize the Indo-Pacific region and manage competition with China before President-elect Donald Trump is inaugurated in January.
Biden will depart Washington for Lima on Thursday for the APEC summit and head to Brazil for the G20 meeting and tour of the Amazon rainforest.
