During a daily news conference, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was asked asked about reports of Biden-Xi meeting in San Francisco, to which he said, “The president is looking forward to it. And that, I think should answer your question.”

Moreover, Indian PM Modi has also been invited for the APEC Leadership summit by President Biden. India is most likely to be represented by a Cabinet-level minister.

Coming back to the Pierre’s statement on Biden’s meeting with Xi, she told reporters, “We’ve been talking about it. The President said he’s looking forward to meeting — to meeting with President Xi. And — and so, not going to get into details about this meeting that’s going to happen in November. It’s going to be in San Francisco. It’s going to be a constructive meeting.”

“Look, what I’m saying is that we’re aiming to have a constructive conversation, meeting between the leaders in San Francisco in November. So that’s what I’m saying. That’s what’s going to happen in November. We’re going to have constructive conversation in San Francisco,” she added.

She also noted that the Biden Administration’s approach to improving relations with China remains unchanged. “This is intense competition, right, that we have said that we want to move forward with China. We understand that and intense competition means intense diplomacy. That’s what you’re going to see. That’s what the president is going to be doing and having a tough conversation, but important conversation,” she said.

“I’m not going to get into any kind of, you know, decisions made on this. This is going to be about the diplomatic conversations. We’ve seen about three secretaries go to China and have these diplomatic conversations. We saw Secretary Blinken, we saw National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan having important conversations, diplomatic conversations with their counterparts in China. This is an important relationship. Again, this is about competition. That’s what we want to see with China,” Jean-Pierre said, adding that “this is going to be an important diplomatic conversation that they are going to have”.

US-China tensions:

Tensions between the world’s leading economies have remained consistently elevated throughout the past year. The two nations have been locked in an escalating trade spat since early 2018, raising import tariffs on each other’s goods. the Biden administration successfully intercepted a Chinese surveillance balloon that traversed the entire United States. Chinese authorities were also implicated in a cyberattack targeting the emails of Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo. Furthermore, the US government imposed restrictions on the export of advanced computer chips to China. apart from this, the two countries’ differences also exacerbated by Russia’s war in Ukraine and China’s increased assertiveness in the Taiwan Strait.

What is APEC Leadership Summit?

APEC is a forum of 21 Asia-Pacific economies. It’s member economies are home to more than 2.9 billion people and make up over 60 percent of the global GDP. Members nations who are included in the APEC are – Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, China, Peru, South Korea, the Philippines, Russia, Singapore, Thailand, the US and Vietnam. From November 11 to 17, delegates of these member economies will convene in San Francisco for the 2023 APEC Economic Leaders’ Week.

With inputs from agencies

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Updated: 01 Nov 2023, 09:17 AM IST