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Joe Biden and Xi Jinping virtual summit set for Monday, White House announces
- ‘The two leaders will discuss ways to responsibly manage the competition between the United States and the [People’s Republic of China],’ press secretary says
- New points of tension have emerged since the two leaders last spoke, including the announcement of military alliance between US, Britain and Australia
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US President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping plan to hold a much-anticipated virtual summit on Monday evening Washington time, the White House announced on Friday.
“Following their September 9 phone call, the two leaders will discuss ways to responsibly manage the competition between the United States and the [People’s Republic of China], as well as ways to work together where our interests align,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said. “Throughout, President Biden will make clear US intentions and priorities and be clear and candid about our concerns with the PRC.”
Leader-to-leader engagement was a critical component of the “intense diplomacy” that Washington’s “intense competition” with Beijing required, Psaki said later on Friday in a briefing.
But she quashed hopes of any concrete results from the impending summit, stressing instead that the engagement was about “setting the terms, in our view, of an effective competition where we’re in a position to defend our values”.
“I wouldn’t set the expectation … that this is intended to have major deliverables or outcomes,” Psaki said.
Robert Delaney is the Post’s North America bureau chief. He spent 11 years in China as a language student and correspondent for Dow Jones Newswires and Bloomberg, and continued covering the country as a correspondent and an academic after leaving. His debut novel, The Wounded Muse, draws on actual events that played out in Beijing while he lived there.
Owen joined the Post in 2018 after several years working as a reporter and editor in China. He covers US-China relations, human rights, and China's influence overseas. A co-founder of the Shanghai-based news outlet Sixth Tone, he is an alumnus of SOAS in London and Fudan University in Shanghai.
Jodi Xu Klein is Deputy Bureau Chief, North America at the Post. Klein is an award-winning business journalist with 20 years of experience. She joined the Post in 2017 following a decade covering finance and business for The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg in New York. She was part of the Time Magazine reporting team that won the Henry R. Luce Award for the China Sars coverage.
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