November 14, 2022 Biden, Xi meet during G20 summit

Chinese leader Xi Jinping said the world is paying attention to the high-stakes meeting between him and US President Biden.

“Currently the China-US relationship is in such a situation that we all care a lot about it because this is not the fundamental interest of our two countries and peoples, and it is not what the international community expects (from) us," Xi said in his opening remarks at the meeting.

“As leaders of the two major countries we need to chart the right course for the US China relationship. We need to find the right direction for the bilateral relationship going forward and elevate the relationship,” he added, speaking through a translator.

Xi said he was a ready to have a “candid and in-depth” exchange of views with Biden on issues of strategic importance on China-US relations and on major global and regional issues.

US President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping have sat down at their tables, flanked by officials on each side.

Biden and Xi both were unmasked, while the other officials in the room were all wearing masks as a Covid-19 precaution.

“I’m committed to keep lines of communication open between you and me personally, but our governments across the board, because our two countries have so much that we have the opportunity to deal with,” said Biden in opening remarks.

“As the leaders of our two nations where share responsibility in my view to show that China and the US can manage our differences, prevent competition from becoming anything even near conflict and find ways to work together on urgent, global issues that require our mutual cooperation.”

US President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping shook hands for the first time as leaders in their first in-person meeting since Biden took office nearly two years ago.

Meeting on the sidelines of the G20 leaders' summit in Bali, Indonesia, the two leaders greeted each other with a firm, long handshake, both smiling, standing in front of a row of US and Chinese flags.

They smiled for cameras and Xi -- through a translator -- appeared to say, "Good to see you."

President Joe Biden has departed his hotel to head to the luxury beachside resort on Nusa Dua bay in Bali, where he will meet with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

Biden’s most senior advisers are expected to accompany him as part of his official delegation, while Xi is expected to similarly surround himself with top aides, several of whom are likely to be new, owing to the ongoing transition inside Xi’s inner circle.

Biden’s aides have not set a time limit for the meeting, though Jake Sullivan, the US national security adviser, said he expected the talks to run “a couple hours” but could extend longer.

“It’s a meeting on the margins of an international summit. So it’s not itself a kind of summit where they’re coming together in a third country or in Washington and Beijing,” he said. “So, we haven’t set a time limit on the conversation.”

Sullivan said Biden would be “totally straightforward and direct” in the meeting, and expected Xi to be similarly candid in return.

President Biden has been preparing extensively for his first face-to-face meeting with Chinese leader Xi, according to advisors, including running through particular scenarios that could arise during the talks.

Biden reads a large amount before these meetings and speaks at length with his senior advisers and China experts on his team.

“He goes through ‘if this happens, then should we handle it this way,’” an official said.

With Xi in particular, Biden feels a special obligation to come as prepared as possible in the knowledge that US-China ties have an outsized importance on the entire world.

Officials said they expected Biden’s senior-most advisers to accompany him as part of his official delegation in Monday's meeting.

And the official said they expected Xi to similarly surround himself with top aides, though the US team entered the meeting expecting to see some new faces on the Chinese side amid an ongoing transition inside Xi’s inner circle.

US President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping will be meeting at The Mulia, a luxury beachside hotel on Nusa Dua bay in Bali.

The sprawling resort, lush with tall palm trees, is where the Chinese delegation is staying during the G20. The Russian delegation and Australian delegation are also staying here.

It's about a 10-minute drive from the US delegation's Grand Hyatt hotel.

Footage of the meeting room aired by China's state broadcaster CCTV shows two long tables underneath rows of chandeliers, with nine seats placed on each side.

A senior US administration official said in a background briefing Monday that Biden’s “closest advisers” will be participating the meeting, with a “handful of trusted interlocutors” on both sides. The official added there will be a number of "new faces" on Xi's team, who are expected to take up important roles to manage China's relations with the US.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has said he'll be meeting Chinese leader Xi Jinping on the sides of the G20 summit, and he looks forward to a “constructive discussion.”

Australian-Chinese relations have deteriorated rapidly in recent years, following calls from the Australian government for an investigation into the origins of Covid-19, and growing concerns over Beijing's influence in domestic affairs.

Speaking to journalists after touching down in Bali on Monday, Albanese said Australia will “put forward our own position” during the bilateral meeting with China on Tuesday and was looking forward to having a "constructive discussion with President Xi."

When questioned regarding the message Australia will convey to China about Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Albanese responded: "We have a very clear position, and it's a consistent position, that there is a need for Russia to withdraw from this aggressive action." 

He also addressed the topic of China's sanctions on Australian exports, including beef, barley, wine, and rock lobster, stressing that Australia will enter the discussion "with goodwill" with "no preconditions." 

Some context: The expected sit-down comes amid signals of an easing of tensions in the relationship, and follows a meeting between Albanese and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang on Saturday during a weekend of meetings linked to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit.

During the meeting, Li said China was ready “to meet Australia halfway,” after a “difficult patch” for Chinese Australian relations, according to Chinese official state news agency Xinhua News Agency.

When Joe Biden and Xi Jinping first got to know each other more than 10 years ago, the US and China had been moving closer for three decades despite their differences.

Seated next to Xi in a Beijing hotel, Biden told a room of Chinese and American business leaders about his “great optimism about the next 30 years” for bilateral relations and praised Xi for being “straightforward.”

During that getting-to-know-you trip to China in 2011, the two leaders shared a marathon of meetings and meals in Beijing and the southwestern city of Chengdu. They also took a trip deep into the green mountains of Sichuan province to visit a rural high school rebuilt after a deadly earthquake.

The next year, Xi paid a reciprocal visit to the US at the invitation of Biden, who hosted his Chinese counterpart for dinner at his residency after a series of meetings at the White House, State Department and the Pentagon. Biden also flew to Los Angeles to meet Xi on the last leg of his trip.

Continued rapport: Their in-person encounters continued after Xi took power in 2012 -- Biden has claimed that as vice president, he spent north of 70 hours with Xi and traveled 17,000 miles with him across China and the United States – both exaggerations, but still reflective of a relationship that is now perhaps the most important on the planet.

The last time they met face to face was in 2015, during Xi’s first state visit to the US as China’s top leader, while Biden was still vice president.

Shifting ties: But as relations between their countries plummeted, the once friendly dynamics between the two leaders have also shifted.

Xi is an ideological hardliner who believes in China’s return to the center of the world stage and is skeptical – some would say hostile – toward America. Biden, meanwhile, has grown increasingly weary of China’s authoritarian turn under Xi, and has framed the rivalry between the two countries as a battle between autocracy and democracy.

Last summer, Biden publicly pushed back on being described as an “old friend” of Xi’s.

Read more about the Biden-Xi relationship here.

China's Foreign Ministry called its policy and position toward the United States "consistent and clear," during comments in a regularly scheduled press briefing in Beijing ahead of the highly anticipated face-to-face between Chinese leader Xi Jinping and US President Joe Biden on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Bali on Monday.

"We are committed to achieving mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation with the United States, while firmly defending our own sovereignty, security and development interests," foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said.

China hopes that the US and China would "move in the same direction, properly manage differences, promote mutually beneficial cooperation, avoid misunderstandings and miscalculations, and promote the return of China-US relations to the right track of healthy and stable development," according to Mao.