Biden and Xi speak for the first time since November amid tensions

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

The call comes amid strong global turbulence – the ongoing wars in Gaza and Ukraine, as well as North Korea's nuclear capabilities, topics that must have been discussed. Other issues that have strained the Washington-Beijing relationship would be on the agenda, including Taiwan, China's recent provocations in the South China Sea and Beijing's human rights violations.

The two leaders were also expected to discuss a range of issues where U.S. and Chinese officials see room for cooperation, including the fight against drugs, the rapidly developing world of artificial intelligence and climate change.

The Biden-Xi chat represents a follow-up to a simple commitment Biden made publicly after meeting with Xi for several hours in Woodside, California, last fall: They pledged to pick up the phone and call more often, with the aim of avoiding potentially dangerous misunderstandings between two of the most powerful countries in the world.

“President Biden and President Xi will discuss the U.S.-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 earlier of the call. “Intense competition requires intense diplomacy to manage tensions, deal with misperceptions and avoid unintended conflicts, and this call is one way to do that.”

A senior administration official who anticipated the call was quick to note that despite the great efforts both countries have made over the past year to de-escalate historically high tensions in the U.S.-China relationship, a phrase Biden had uttered after his summit with Xi still remains operable: “Trust, but verify.”

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

This dynamic was highlighted during the November summit, when Biden – after highlighting the constructive nature of his meeting with Xi – told a reporter from CNN 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 an important meeting between the two leaders.

The Biden administration plans to continue to emphasize to Beijing the serious U.S. concerns about Chinese efforts to hack into critical U.S. infrastructure, the official said.

A CNN exclusively reported in January that Xi had told Biden when they met in November that China would not interfere in the US presidential election and that this 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 came out of their summit in California last year, including the reestablishment of communications between the two countries' militaries and their pledge to work together to curb fentanyl production. The conversation was meant to serve as a “check-in” on progress made over the past year in these areas, the official said.

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

And while China has shied away from publicly providing lethal aid to Russia to aid 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 bringing back trade in European partners.”

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

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

Janet Yellen's trip to China

In a significant mark of the Biden administration's continued engagement with Beijing, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is scheduled to visit China later this week, where she will 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 on Monday that he planned to have frank discussions about what the administration considers China's “unfair” trade practices.

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

In addition to Yellen, other U.S. officials spoke with their Chinese counterparts in 2024, demonstrating how critical the administration views 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 scheduled to travel to China “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 defense minister “soon.” ”.