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US President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping have agreed to resume communications between the countries’ militaries at a summit outside San Francisco designed to stabilise relations after several years of rising concern about possible conflict over Taiwan.
At a press conference on Wednesday following his meeting with Xi, Biden said the two countries had reached a series of agreements, including a commitment from China to reopen the military communication channels that Beijing had shut after then-US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in August 2022.
“We’re back to direct, open, clear . . . communication,” said Biden, who added that it was “important progress” in US-China relations.
The two sides also agreed to set up a counter-narcotics working group. Beijing agreed to curb the export of chemicals used to make fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that has sparked a deadly drug epidemic in the US.
Biden and Xi held roughly four hours of talks in what was their second in-person summit since the US president took office in 2021. They are attempting to steady turbulent US-China relations, which have descended to their lowest point since the countries established ties in 1979.
Biden said he had stressed to Xi the importance of “peace and stability” in the Taiwan Strait, but he sidestepped a question about whether he stood by his previous four statements that he would order the US military to defend Taiwan in the face of an attack by China. He also declined to say if Xi had made clear under what circumstances China would attack Taiwan.
Over the past three years, tensions have escalated over a range of issues. Washington has become increasingly concerned about Chinese military activity around Taiwan, the country’s rapidly expanding nuclear arsenal and its treatment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang.
China has raised concerns in return about US export controls and other measures that are designed to make it much harder for it to obtain cutting-edge US technology, such as chips for quantum computing and artificial intelligence, that also have military applications.
As the leaders greeted each other at the Filoli estate outside San Francisco, Biden said they had an obligation to ensure competition did not turn into conflict. Xi said that despite some “grave” problems, they should be “fully capable of rising above differences”.
“Planet Earth is big enough for the two countries to succeed,” Xi said.
China’s official state news agency Xinhua said the two sides also agreed to establish a dialogue on artificial intelligence and increase the number of commercial flights between the countries. Xinhua said Xi told Biden that his recent executive order restricting investment into China and sanctions “seriously damaged China’s legitimate interests”.
“Suppressing Chinese technology equates to containing China’s high-quality development and depriving the Chinese people of their right to development,” Xi said, noting he hoped the US would take actions to remedy the policies and provide fair treatment to Chinese companies.
Xi said China had “no plans to surpass or replace the US, and the US should not intend to suppress or contain China”.
After their talks, which included a lunch, the leaders strolled around the grounds of the estate. Asked by reporters nearby how the talks went, Biden responded “well” after giving a thumbs-up gesture.
Biden said while the two countries had disagreements, Xi had always “been straight” with him. But asked at the press conference if he still viewed Xi as a “dictator” — a reference to a comment Biden made during the presidential campaign — he said Xi was a dictator “in a sense”.
The two leaders held their first in-person meeting a year ago on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Bali, Indonesia. At that meeting they also agreed on the need to resume high-level engagement to help ensure that coercion “did not veer into conflict”.
Their efforts were derailed three months later after a suspected Chinese spy balloon flew over North America and was shot down by the US military.
In recent months they have renewed engagement through a series of diplomatic activities, including a visit to Beijing by US secretary of state Antony Blinken and a reciprocal trip to Washington by Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi.
Ahead of the summit, US officials stressed that while there would be some more agreements, the aim of the meeting was to ensure there were top-level channels of communication to prevent misunderstandings and ensure they did not have a conflict.
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