Coming off the Biden-Putin summit this week, the White House says it’s mulling bilateral talks between the US President and Chinese President Xi Jinping, according to a statement by National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan on Thursday.
“What the President said about there being no substitute for leader-level dialogue as a central part of why he held the summit with Putin yesterday also applies to China and to President Xi Jinping,” Sullivan said at a press briefing. “He will look for opportunities to engage with President Xi going forward.”
While underscoring there are currently no “particular plans at the moment” – he suggested an opportunity will be looked at for the G20 summit in Italy in October, given both leaders will be there.
“Soon enough, we will sit down to work out the right modality for the two presidents to engage,” Sullivan said. “It could be a phone call, it could be a meeting on the margins of another international summit, it could be something else,” he added.
During his Wednesday press conference following what has so far been the most important foreign policy moment of his presidency, the Putin summit, Biden stated his belief that “there is no substitute, as those of you who have covered me for a while know, for a face-to-face dialogue between leaders.”
Later in his remarks to the press, Biden was asked about pushing President Xi to pursue an investigation into COVID-19 origins. Biden responded: “We know each other well; we’re not old friends. It’s just pure business.”
But recall back in March at the Anchorage meeting between a White House team led by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Sullivan with China’s top diplomats things didn’t go so well and were anything but “business as usual” – starting with accusations from the US side of Beijing threatening the “rules-based order” – met by harsh Chinese denunciations that the US had leveled “wanton attacks” and the failure of acceptable “diplomatic etiquette” due to US bad manners.
At Anchorage the Chinese delegation had stormed out of the hotel without holding the expected press conference. Let’s see if any upcoming Biden-Xi meeting next Fall will have better results… however, it’s likely that by that time more pressure will have built on Beijing as the official pandemic origin narrative continues to unravel.
