Biden to tell Xi to follow the rules of the road at first summit

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Washington: US President Joe Biden will use his first summit with Xi Jinping to confront his counterpart about China’s economic coercion of countries such as Australia in a meeting US officials predicted would be “direct and candid”.

Biden and Xi will meet by videoconference late Tuesday morning (AEDT), the first time the leaders will have spoken face-to-face since Biden’s inauguration.

In a briefing to preview the meeting, a senior Biden administration official told reporters: “This is an opportunity for President Biden to tell President Xi directly that he expects him to play by the rules of the road which is what other responsible nations do.

“On everything from technology to trade to international institutions and international waterways, we have concerns about the PRC’s [Peoples Republic of China’s] behaviour.“

Joe Biden with Xi Jinping, pictured in 2013 when Biden was US vice-president. Credit:AP

The senior official continued: “The President will be very direct and candid about areas where we have concerns about China’s behaviour.”

Biden will raise concerns about China’s economic coercion of countries such as Australia, China’s “coercive and provocative behaviour in respect to Taiwan” and human rights issues, the official said.

Biden and Xi have previously spoken twice by telephone since the US President’s inauguration.

The official said that Biden will go into the meeting with a “strong hand” because earlier in the day he will have signed into law a US$1.2 trillion infrastructure bill designed to help the US better compete with China economically.

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The summit is not expected to result in any specific policy announcements, but is instead designed to ensure that Biden and Xi have a productive working relationship as the leaders of the world’s two most powerful nations.

A good relationship between the two leaders will help ensure that competition does not morph into conflict by guarding against “misunderstanding and miscalculation”, the official said.

In a phone call over the weekend with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said he hoped the meeting would “bring bilateral relations back onto the track of sound and steady development”.

As well as discussing issues of disagreement, Biden will also raise areas of potential co-operation between the US and China - such as climate change and global health security.

“Even as we compete vigorously with China we know that as two large countries there are areas on which our interests align and where we should be able to work together,” the official said.

Last week the US and China issued a joint climate declaration at the Glasgow summit, raising hopes the rivals will be able to work together on climate change despite their vast array of differences in other areas.

The Biden administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, stressed that Chinese action on emissions reduction was “not a favour to us” but simply what “responsible nations do”.

“We very much reject the linkage between co-operation on transnational issues and bilateral relations,” the official said.

The official said that Biden did not go into the summit with false hope about changing Xi’s increasingly assertive behaviour.

“Unlike previous approaches to policy with respect to China, the Biden administration is not trying to change China through bilateral engagement,” the official said.

“We don’t think that’s realistic. Rather, we are trying to shape the international environment in a way that’s favourable to us, our allies and partners.”

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