Biden failed to secure summit with China's Xi in call last week -FT

Tue, September 14, 2021, 5:04 PMIn this article:

WASHINGTON  (Reuters) - President Joe Biden proposed a first face-to-face summit  with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, in a call last week, but  failed to secure an agreement, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday.

The  newspaper quoted multiple people briefed on last Thursday's call as  saying that Xi did not take Biden up on the offer and instead insisted  Washington adopt a less strident tone toward Beijing.

The White  House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But a source  who was among those briefed on the 90-minute Biden-Xi call confirmed  the report was accurate.

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"Xi apparently intimated that the tone and atmosphere of the relationship needed to be improved first," the source said.

China's embassy in Washington did not immediately respond when asked to comment.

The  Financial Times quoted one of its sources as saying Biden had floated  the summit as one of several possibilities for follow-on engagement with  Xi, and he had not expected an immediate response.

It cited one  U.S. official as saying that while Xi did not engage with the idea of a  summit, the White House believed that was partly due to concerns about  COVID-19.

The G20 summit in Italy in October has been talked about  as a possible venue for a face-to-face meeting, but Xi has not left  China since the outbreak of the pandemic early last year.

The call  between Biden and Xi was their first in seven months and they discussed  the need to ensure that competition between the world's two largest  economies does not veer into conflict.

A U.S. official briefing  before the conversation called it a test of whether direct top-level  engagement could end what had become a stalemate in ties, which are at  the worst level in decades.

The White House said afterward it was  intended to keep channels of communication open, but it has announced no  plans for follow-on engagements.

Chinese state media said Xi had  told Biden that U.S. policy on China imposed "serious difficulties" on  relations, but added that both sides agreed to maintain frequent contact  and ask working-level teams to step up communications.

(Reporting by David Brunnstrom in Washington and Shubham Kalia in Bengaluru; Editing by Leslie Adler and Peter Cooney)