Biden and Xi speak for first time since November summit amid global tensions

President Joe Biden spoke on the phone with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday, marking the first conversation between the leaders since their historic in-person summit in November and the latest in ongoing efforts by US and Chinese officials to defuse tensions between the two superpowers.

The call comes amid heavy global turbulence – the ongoing wars in Gaza and Ukraine, as well as North Korea’s nuclear capabilities, were expected to be topics of discussion. Other issues that have strained the Washington-Beijing relationship were also expected to come up, including Taiwan, China’s recent provocations in the South China Sea and Beijing’s human rights abuses.

The two leaders were also expected to discuss a number of issues where US and Chinese officials see room for cooperation, including countering narcotics, the fast-developing world of artificial intelligence and climate change.

The Biden-Xi chat represents a follow-through on a simple commitment that Biden made publicly after meeting with Xi for multiple hours in Woodside, California, last fall: That, moving forward, the two leaders would pick up the phone and call each other more often, with an eye towards preventing potentially dangerous misunderstandings between two of the most powerful countries in the world.

“President Biden and President Xi will discuss the US-China bilateral relationship, the continued importance of strengthening lines of communication and managing competition responsibly, and a range of regional and global issues,” a senior administration official told reporters ahead of the call. “Intense competition requires intense diplomacy to manage tensions, address misperceptions and prevent unintended conflict, and this call is one way to do that.”

A senior administration official previewing the call was quick to note that despite the great lengths to which both countries have gone to over the last year to de-escalate historic high tensions in US-China relations, a phrase Biden had uttered after his summit with Xi still remains operable: “Trust but verify.”

“I don’t think we ever really take the Chinese at their word when they say they will or will not do something. It is about verifying, as the president says,” the official told CNN when asked about Xi’s pledge that Beijing will not interfere in the US’ 2024 election. “Verifying the results we see, the actions we see, and then continuing to underscore and press on what our concerns are.”

That fraught dynamic was underscored during November’s summit when Biden – after underscoring the constructive nature of his meeting with Xi – told a CNN reporter that he would still refer to the Chinese leader as a dictator. The label, which Biden had previously used to describe Xi, quickly drew the ire of the Chinese government, and marked an awkward end to what was a momentous meeting between the two leaders.

The Biden administration plans to continue stressing to Beijing the US’ grave concerns about Chinese efforts to hack US critical infrastructure, the official said.

CNN reported exclusively in January that Xi had told Biden when they met in November that China would not interfere in the US presidential election, and that that assurance had also been reiterated by the Chinese foreign minister to Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan.

Biden and Xi also planned to examine some of the announcements that had come out of their California summit last year, including the re-establishment of the two countries’ military-to-military communications and their pledge to work together to curb the production of fentanyl. The conversation was meant to serve as a “check in” on the progress made over the last year in those areas, the official said.

Biden was also expected to address China’s support for Russia over its continued war in Ukraine on Tuesday’s call, on the heels of Xi’s recent pledge to “strengthen strategic coordination” between China and Russia on a call with Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier this year.

And while China has shied away from publicly providing lethal aid to Russia to assist in its invasion of Ukraine, the official warned that China’s support for Russia has allowed the country “to rebuild Russia’s defense industrial base, essentially backfilling the trade from European partners.”

“China, of course, is a sovereign country, it will make its own decisions about its relationships, but quite concerned about the direction of travel on this one, and I’m certain it will come up,” the official said Monday.

Biden and Xi last spoke on the phone in July 2022.

“We would hope there would be a chance for another in-person meeting” in the near future, the senior administration official said.

In a significant mark of the Biden administration’s ongoing engagement with Beijing, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is scheduled to visit China later this week, where she’ll meet with her Chinese counterparts in her second visit to the country as Treasury secretary.

Yellen is scheduled to make two stops, traveling to Guangzhou and Beijing, for meetings with economists, students and members of the business community. A Treasury official told reporters Monday she planned to have frank discussions on what the administration considers “unfair” trade practices from China.

The Treasury secretary has vocally warned of the threat China’s overcapacity poses to the global economy, but has also cautioned that decoupling with the manufacturing juggernaut would be “disastrous” for the US.

In addition to Yellen, other US officials have spoken with their Chinese counterparts in 2024, demonstrating just how critical the administration sees its bilateral relationship with the country.

In January, Sullivan met with the Chinese foreign minister in Bangkok, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with the Chinese official in Munich in February. Blinken is also set to travel to China himself “in the coming weeks,” the senior administration official told reporters Monday, while Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is expected to participate in a call with China’s minister of defense “soon.”