Biden, Xi to meet in Peru as US-China relations tested again by Trump's return

WASHINGTON (AP) President Joe Biden will speak with China's Xi Jinping on the sidelines of an international summit in Peru on Saturday, a face-to-face meeting that comes as Beijing prepares for Donald Trump's return home White.

A senior Biden administration official, who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity ahead of the official announcement, confirmed that the meeting would take place while the two leaders are in Lima for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. . This will come a little more than two months before Trump's inauguration.

The official declined to comment on how Biden and his advisers would respond to questions sure to be raised by Xi and Chinese officials about the new Trump administration or whether Biden would discuss U.S.-China relations with Trump during the president's visit elected to the White House. Wednesday.

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The official simply suggested that the next administration will have to find ways to manage this difficult and complicated relationship.

During his campaign against Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump promised to impose across-the-board 60% tariffs on all Chinese exports to the United States, a move that would upend already tumultuous relations between Beijing and Washington .

Washington and Beijing have long had deep differences over China's support for Russia during its war in Ukraine, on issues of human rights, technology and Taiwan, the self-governing democracy that Beijing claims as the his. A second Trump administration is expected to test U.S.-China relations even more than the Republican first term, when the U.S. imposed tariffs on more than $360 billion in goods Chinese.

This brought Beijing to the negotiating table, and in 2020 the two sides signed a trade deal in which China committed to improving intellectual property rights and purchasing an additional $200 billion worth of U.S. products. A few years later, a research group showed that China had purchased virtually none of the promised goods.

The White House has been working for months to arrange a final meeting between Xi and Biden before the Democrat leaves office in January.

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan traveled to Beijing in late August to meet his Chinese counterpart and also spoke with Xi. After that, Sullivan indicated there could be a final meeting between Xi and Biden at APEC or at next week's Group of 20 summit in Rio de Janeiro, which both leaders are expected to attend.

Biden has sought to maintain a stable relationship with Xi, even as his administration has repeatedly expressed concerns about what it sees as malign actions by Beijing.

U.S. intelligence officials have estimated that China has increased its sales to Russia of machine tools, microelectronics and other technologies that Moscow uses to produce missiles, tanks, planes and other weapons for its war against Ukraine. The administration last month imposed sanctions on two Chinese companies accused of directly helping Russia build long-range attack drones used against Ukraine.

Tensions flared last year after Biden ordered the shooting down of a Chinese spy balloon that was passing through the United States. And the Biden administration has criticized the Chinese military's assertiveness toward Japan, the Philippines and Taiwan.

On the campaign trail, Trump spoke of his personal ties with Xi, which began well during his first term before becoming strained by trade disputes and the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In a congratulatory message to Trump after his victory over Harris, Xi called on the United States and China to manage their differences and get along in a new era, according to Chinese state media.

Biden, for his part, is expected to focus in the meeting with Xi on efforts to stem the flow of Chinese-made chemicals used to make fentanyl, concerns about Beijing's indirect support for Russia's war in Ukraine , cybersecurity issues and the importance of maintaining the military. -military communications.

Saturday's talks will be the third meeting between Biden and Xi during Biden's presidency. They met in Woodside, California, last November, on the sidelines of the 2023 APEC summit, and the leaders last spoke by phone in April.