Joe Biden to meet Xi Jinping on G20 sidelines

US President Joe Biden will meet Chinese President Xi Jinping next week in Bali on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit, the White House has announced.

The meeting comes in an effort to build a "floor for the relationship" between the two countries, the Associated Press (AP) news agency quoted a senior US administration official as saying.

The meeting will be the first between the two leaders since Biden was inaugurated as president in January 2021. It comes shortly after Xi won an unusual third term in office last month, guaranteeing him five more years.

US and Chinese relations have suffered a significant strain recently. Technological competition, the human rights situation in the Taiwan strait and the Sino-Russian relations have all driven a wedge between the two countries.

What will be discussed at the meeting?

The two leaders are meeting to "responsibly manage competition and work together where our interests align, especially on transnational challenges that affect the international community," White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement.

Biden also told reporters that he would bring up the topic of the self-ruled Taiwan, and touch upon the growing tensions between the two countries regarding that matter, as well as trade policies, and China's relations with Russia.

The US president said that he sought to explore each country's "red lines" and "critical national interests" in order to "determine whether or not they conflict with one another," AP quoted him as saying.

Tensions between China and Western countries rose in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February. At NATO's summit in the summer, members described China as a "security challenge" for the first time.

The relations with the US however came to a new low in August, after a visit to Taiwan by US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Joe Biden's explicit pledge to defend the self-ruled island that China claims as its territory.

rmt/aw (AP, Reuters)