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The first face-to-face meeting between President Xi Jinping and United States President Joe Biden has charted the path for improving ties between the world’s two largest economies and bringing stability and certainty to a turbulent and volatile world, officials and analysts said.
The two leaders greeted each other on Monday with a smile and a warm handshake before holding a meeting that lasted for over three hours — longer than scheduled and using simultaneous interpretation — on the sidelines of the G20 Summit in Bali, Indonesia.
Xi and Biden emphasized the global implications of China-US relations, underscored the importance of establishing guiding principles for bilateral ties and said they hoped to push the relations back to a steady track from a downward spiral, State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi told a news briefing after the meeting.
They agreed to bolster dialogue and exchanges and promote pragmatic cooperation, which charted the way forward for the relations and will help bring the ties gradually back to a track of healthy and stable development, Wang said.
The meeting came months after Beijing broke off a number of routine contacts with Washington after US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, which took bilateral relations to a historic low level.
Wang, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, said the meeting made clear that both sides should prevent the relations from losing direction or speed, still less having a collision, and should find the right way to get along.
The two leaders also exchanged views on the Ukraine issue, with the Chinese president underscoring the urgency of a peaceful settlement of the crisis.
“In all, the meeting reached its expected purpose of in-depth communication, clarifying intentions, drawing red lines, preventing conflicts, pointing the way forward and exploring cooperation,” Wang said.
The two leaders agreed that both sides will conduct dialogue over macroeconomic policies and bilateral trade, and enable positive outcomes from the 27th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, or COP27.
They also highlighted the need to implement the cooperation document on public health and agriculture and expand people-to-people exchanges in various sectors.
Erik Solheim, former undersecretary general of the United Nations, said the meeting between Xi and Biden went beyond expectations, given that China-US relations are critical for world peace and the environment.
