Joe Biden and Xi Jinping will speak after a rare trip to China by a US security adviser

BEIJING – US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping will speak by phone in the “coming weeks”, the White House announced on Wednesday.

The announcement came amid US national security adviser Jake Sullivan’s trip to Beijing this week to meet with Wang Yi, China’s top diplomat.

Both sides said their military leaders would also hold a call in the near future.

Chin added that plans for a second round of talks between the US and China on artificial intelligence are underway. The White House said John Podesta, the president’s senior adviser on international climate policy, would travel to China soon, without specifying a date.

In official readings of Sullivan’s trip, the two nations maintained their positions on technology restrictions, Taiwan, the South China Sea and Ukraine.

Biden is not running for re-election in November after this summer, conceding the nomination to his vice president, Kamala Harris. The White House statement did not name the presidents, but mentioned plans for a “leader-level call.”

The Chinese side’s statement used its typical “two heads of state” language and said both sides were discussing “a new round of interaction,” according to a CNBC translation of the Chinese.

Biden and Xi held a nearly two-hour phone call in early April after the two leaders met in November 2023 on the sidelines of a summit in Woodside, California.

High-level communication between the world’s two largest economies has not been easy in recent years amid heightened tensions and restrictions related to Covid-19.

Then-US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan in August 2022 and a high-profile “balloon incident” in February 2023 further strained their relationship, suspending some planned talks.

Sullivan arrived in Beijing on Tuesday, completed two days of meetings with Wang on Wednesday and is due to leave on Thursday. This is his first trip to China as national security adviser, despite multiple meetings with Wang in recent years.

The last official trip to China by a US president’s national security adviser was in 2016, when Susan Rice traveled to Beijing under the Obama administration.

While the outcome of November’s presidential election remains unclear, being tough on Beijing is a rare issue on which both American political parties agree.

Harris’ current national security adviser, Phil Gordon, told a Council on Foreign Relations event in May that the “China challenge” is much bigger than Taiwan and requires ensuring that Beijing “doesn’t have the advanced technology, intelligence and military capabilities”. that can challenge us”.