Biden and China's Xi discuss avoiding conflict in call

WASHINGTON/BEIJING: US President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping spoke for 90 minutes in their first talks in seven months on Thursday, discussing the need to avoid letting competition between the world’s two largest economies veer into conflict.

After what was only the second call between the leaders since Biden took office, the US side said that the “proof will be in the pudding” as to whether the stalemate can be broken with relations between the superpowers languishing at their lowest point in decades.

A White House statement said Biden and Xi had “a broad, strategic discussion,” including areas where interests and values converge and diverge. The conversation focused on economic issues, climate change and COIVD-19, a senior US official told reporters.

“President Biden underscored the United States’ enduring interest in peace, stability, and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific and the world and the two leaders discussed the responsibility of both nations to ensure competition does not veer into conflict,” the statement said.

Occasional high-level meetings since Xi and Biden’s first call in February have yielded scant progress on a slew of issues, from human rights to transparency over the origins of COVID-19.

During the ensuing months, the two sides have lashed out at each other almost constantly, often resorting to vitriolic public attacks, slapping sanctions on each other’s officials and criticizing the other for not upholding their international obligations.

Chinese state media said Xi had told Biden that US policy on China imposes “serious difficulties” on relations, but added that both sides agreed to maintain frequent contact and to ask working-level teams to increase communications.

“China and the United States should … show strategic courage and insight, and political boldness, and push Sino-US relations back to the right track of stable development as soon as possible,” the state media report said, citing Xi.