According to those familiar with the plans, the first meeting between President Joe Biden and China’s Xi Jinping might take place in November on the fringes of an international conference in Asia.
The news comes at a time when tensions between the two nations are high, after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s travel to Taiwan last week.
Now, Chinese authorities are apparently planning for Xi to visit Southeast Asia on his first overseas trip in three years, where he will meet with Biden for the first time since the American president entered office.
According to officials engaged in the preparations, the 69-year-old Chinese leader will attend his party conference in the autumn, when he is likely to break with history and seek a third term as premier.
Then, on November 15 to 16, he will attend a Group of 20 meeting on the Indonesian island of Bali.
He will next go to Bangkok, Thailand, for an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference two days later.
Officials are preparing for a meeting with Biden on the margins of one of the summits as part of the planning, but those plans might change, they added.
US officials said they couldn’t comment on Chinese authorities’ plans.
However, a White House source emphasized that officials were working for a face-to-face meeting after the two leaders talked by phone at the end of last month.
According to the Chinese Foreign Ministry, ‘China supports Indonesia and Thailand as hosts of the two conferences, and is ready to cooperate with all parties to promote the conference to achieve favorable outcomes.’
Xi has not left China since a formal visit to Burma in January 2020. As COVID spread, Chinese health officials declared a public health emergency. During that period, China has increased its claims on Taiwan, and worries have intensified in recent weeks that an invasion is imminent.
Pelosi landed in Taiwan this week, following days of concern about whether she would make the trip and possibly escalate tensions with Beijing, which sees Taiwan as Chinese property that will be reunified with the mainland in the future.
It made her the highest-ranking elected politician from the United States to visit Taiwan in decades.
Beijing responded by deploying fighter planes, warships, and ballistic missiles surrounding Taiwan, which observers believed was a rehearsal for a blockade or invasion of the island.
This week, Biden said that he was “concerned” but “not alarmed” about China’s military exercises.
And Biden has refrained from attacking Pelosi.
When queried about the trip by reporters as he departed his Delaware beach house for a day excursion to Kentucky on Monday morning, he answered, ‘That was her choice.’
Kurt Campbell, Indo-Pacific coordinator, accused China of overreacting and using it as an excuse to attempt to alter the status quo in the Taiwan Strait.
‘China has overreacted, and its actions continue to be aggressive, disruptive, and unprecedented,’ he told reporters, calling the pressure campaign on Taiwan as ‘intensified.’