Biden-Xi SummitBiden Sees No Imminent Invasion of Taiwan by China

In President Biden and Xi Jinping’s first face-to-face meeting as top leaders, tensions about Taiwan were evident, but there were some areas of agreement, including climate negotiations.

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President Biden and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, met face to face for a nearly three-hour meeting amid rising tensions between the U.S. and China.CreditCredit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
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Here is what to know about Monday’s summit.

BALI, Indonesia — President Biden and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, met for nearly three hours to hash out some of the thorniest issues in their relationship, including tensions over Taiwan, the economy and a return to climate negotiations.

Mr. Biden and Mr. Xi made a cautious promise to try to improve a relationship that is at its most rancorous point in decades, and he pledged to send his top envoy to China soon.

Mr. Biden warned Mr. Xi that China’s aggressive stance toward Taiwan threatened stability in the region and could ultimately jeopardize the global economy. Mr. Xi replied that Taiwan’s independence was as incompatible to peace and stability as “fire and water.”

“I do not think there’s an imminent attempt on the part of China to invade Taiwan,” Mr. Biden said at a news conference after the meeting.

Mr. Xi and Mr. Biden, in their first face-to-face meeting as top leaders, were betting big that personal diplomacy and their shared history could help mediate deep disagreements that threaten to easily derail their fragile accord.

About the global economy, Mr. Biden said that the United States would “compete vigorously, and I’m not looking for conflict. I’m looking to manage this competition responsibly. I want to make sure that every country abides by the international rules of the road.”

China, in its statement, said that teams from each government would work on implementing the points of consensus and “promoting the return of China-U.S. relations to a stable track of development.”

Though both sides left the summit without finding common ground on some of their most contentious disagreements, both leaders appeared eager to downplay the idea that Washington and Beijing were headed toward Cold War-era confrontation.

“I absolutely believe there need not be a new Cold War,” Mr. Biden said.

What else to know:

  • The White House, in a separate statement, said that Antony J. Blinken, the secretary of state, would travel to China at some point after the meeting.

  • Compounding tensions between the two countries is Beijing’s partnership with Moscow. Mr. Biden, the White House said in its summary, raised the invasion and threats by the Russians to use nuclear weapons. Both leaders “reiterated their agreement that a nuclear war should never be fought,” the White House said. According to the Chinese account, Mr. Xi said that “China is highly concerned with the current situation in Ukraine.”

  • The two men, who have known each other since Mr. Biden was vice president, have talked by phone or video five times in the past 18 months.

  • Mr. Xi came to the meeting as the most powerful Chinese leader in decades, weeks after a Communist Party congress gave him a groundbreaking third term in office. And Mr. Biden was buoyed by a better-than-expected performance for Democrats in the midterm elections last week.

Edward Wong
Nov. 14, 2022, 1:48 p.m. ET

Blinken plans to visit China in early 2023 to follow up on Biden and Xi’s meeting.

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President Biden meeting with China’s leader, Xi Jinping, on Monday in Bali, Indonesia.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

WASHINGTON — Antony J. Blinken, the U.S. secretary of state, plans to visit China early next year to follow up on the meeting between President Biden and China’s leader, Xi Jinping, in Bali, Indonesia, a State Department official in Washington said on Monday.

The trip to China by Mr. Blinken, his first as secretary of state, would have the same broad aims as the meeting in Bali: to keep the lines of communication open and to have frank exchanges about important issues at senior levels in order to avoid conflict. American and Chinese officials plan to work out details of the trip over the coming weeks.

Mr. Biden said at his news conference in Bali on Monday night that Mr. Blinken would make a trip sometime soon. Mr. Blinken sat to Mr. Biden’s right as the American delegation met in a hotel with Mr. Xi and Chinese officials. The U.S. ambassador to China, R. Nicholas Burns, was also on the American side of the table.

Mr. Blinken has met with Wang Yi, the foreign minister of China, several times in various places outside of China. They spoke in late September on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly meeting. Taiwan was a central topic of the discussions.

Mr. Blinken and Mr. Wang first met in their current roles in March 2021 in Anchorage, Alaska, where Mr. Wang and Yang Jiechi, China’s top Communist Party official for foreign policy, sharply criticized Mr. Blinken and Jake Sullivan, the White House national security adviser, on U.S. policy on China.

“We believe that it is important for the United States to change its own image, and to stop advancing its own democracy in the rest of the world,” Mr. Yang told Mr. Blinken and Mr. Sullivan in that meeting.

In internal discussions, Mr. Blinken has been supportive of the Biden administration’s actions on China, including the sweeping export controls on semiconductor technology announced last month.

Mr. Blinken has rallied allies and partners to denounce China’s actions on Taiwan, including the military exercises and missile tests that Beijing carried out after Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to the island in August. And Mr. Blinken has not changed the official State Department designation of the Chinese government’s actions against ethnic Uighurs in Xinjiang as “genocide,” a designation that Mr. Blinken’s predecessor, Mike Pompeo, made in January 2021, right before the end of the Trump administration.

At the same time, Mr. Blinken is a proponent of Mr. Biden’s goal of keeping open channels of communication with China in order to avoid a rapid deterioration of the relationship. The two countries are the world’s largest economies and have extensive trade ties.

U.S. officials said after the meeting in Bali that the two countries would resume diplomatic talks that Beijing had frozen after Ms. Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan. That includes talks on climate change and global environmental policy.

But analysts say Mr. Blinken and other administration officials will continue to enact tough policies on China even as they carry on diplomacy.

“To use Theodore Roosevelt’s phrase, Biden’s approach to China can be described as ‘speak softly and carry a big stick,’” said Yuen Yuen Ang, a political scientist at the University of Michigan. “Unlike Trump, Biden does not send wild tweets or insult China, but he is determined to counter China’s rise, and he has been steadily doing so by rallying allies and cutting off China’s access to critical technology.”

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Ana Swanson
Nov. 14, 2022, 12:15 p.m. ET

Biden and Xi agree to keep communications open, but differ on many other points.

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Xi Jinping, China’s leader, with President Biden on Monday.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

The statements that the United States and China put out after the meeting on Monday between President Biden and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, had some similarities: Both described the talks as candid and agreed that the countries must work together on global issues like climate change, food security and economic stability.

But on other issues, the summaries of the meeting presented by the countries differed. Most strikingly, they appeared to reflect fundamentally different views on the relations between the two countries and where they are headed. Mr. Biden appeared determined to stay on the current course, saying that the United States would “continue to compete vigorously” with China but that this “competition should not veer into conflict,” according to the U.S. account of the meeting.

In a summary of the meeting published by Chinese state media, Mr. Xi appeared to express more dissatisfaction with the direction of relations. He said the relationship between the United States and China did not conform to the fundamental interests of the countries or their people, or meet the expectations of the international community. He argued that the leaders should return relations to the track of “healthy and stable development.” But he did not clarify what point in history he was referring to, given relations with China have been strained for years.

Both accounts addressed the status of Taiwan at length, with each urging “peace and stability” in the Taiwan Strait. The U.S. account mentioned Mr. Biden’s raising objections to China’s coercive and increasingly aggressive actions toward Taiwan. According to the Chinese readout, Mr. Xi said that Taiwanese independence was incompatible with peace and stability in the strait, and Mr. Biden told Mr. Xi that the United States did not support Taiwanese independence.

Both readouts also mentioned that officials “exchanged views” on the war in Ukraine, but differed significantly on the focus. The Chinese readout quoted Mr. Xi as saying that wars produced no winners and that major power confrontation must be avoided, and urging all parties to engage in peace talks. The White House account said that Mr. Biden and Mr. Xi agreed that a nuclear war should never be fought, something not explicitly mentioned by the Chinese version.

The Chinese statement also made no mention of North Korea, U.S. concerns about Chinese practices in Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong, or human rights more broadly. Mr. Biden also said he raised ongoing concerns about China’s nonmarket economic practices and Americans who are wrongfully detained in China.

Both sides agreed that senior officials would maintain communication and regular consultations, with the Chinese readout adding that financial officials would coordinate on macroeconomic policies and economic and trade issues.

Ana Swanson
Nov. 14, 2022, 11:57 a.m. ET

The Chinese government has responded angrily to those restrictions and nodded at them in its readout from the meetings, saying that fighting trade wars and technology wars and pushing for decoupling violates market economy principles undermine the rules of international trade. China opposes the “politicization and weaponization” of economic, trade, scientific and technology exchanges, it added.

Ana Swanson
Nov. 14, 2022, 11:57 a.m. ET

One point of friction hanging over the meeting was the sweeping restrictions the United States issued last month on China’s access to semiconductor technology. The rules prevent China from buying and manufacturing some kinds of advanced semiconductors that can be used to deliver hypersonic missiles or potentially crack the U.S. military’s most advanced codes.

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Keith Bradsher
Nov. 14, 2022, 10:58 a.m. ET

Reporting from Beijing

Xi follows practice of not taking questions from foreign journalists.

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Former President Barack Obama, left, and Xi Jinping, China’s leader, listened as a journalist, standing, asked questions during a joint news conference in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing in 2014.Credit...Greg Baker/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

President Xi Jinping of China followed his usual practice in Bali, Indonesia, on Monday of not taking questions from foreign correspondents.

That was not always the case with Chinese leaders.

Jiang Zemin, China’s top leader from 1989 to 2002 as general secretary of the country’s Communist Party, used to take questions after meetings with American presidents, but the practice began to fade under his successor, Hu Jintao. After a meeting in 2014 with President Barack Obama, Mr. Xi did take questions from a Chinese journalist and from an American correspondent — Mark Landler of The New York Times.

In the years since then, Mr. Xi has generally preferred gatherings in which he reads prepared remarks to assembled journalists and then departs without taking any questions. He took the more taciturn approach when he led the new members of the Politburo Standing Committee out in front of Chinese and foreign journalists after the conclusion last month of the Communist Party congress.

Chris Buckley
Nov. 14, 2022, 10:32 a.m. ET

Taiwan is a ‘red line’ not to be crossed, China says.

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Celebrating Taiwan’s National Day in Taoyuan last month.Credit...Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times

While President Biden sought to lower the temperature on Taiwan in his summit with China’s leader, Xi Jinping, their talks were also a sharp reminder that the future of the island remains the issue most likely to plunge U.S.-China relations into crisis, even war.

The status of Taiwan has been a contentious point between Beijing and Washington ever since President Richard M. Nixon made his groundbreaking trip to Beijing half a century ago. Chinese Communist Party leaders and many Chinese people adamantly believe that Taiwan is Chinese territory, snatched from Beijing’s hands when defeated Nationalist forces fled to the island after their defeat in China’s civil war.

But nowadays most people in Taiwan see their country as a distinctive and proudly democratic society that could never survive under Chinese sovereignty. Under the so-called “one China” policy, successive American presidents have said they “acknowledged” Beijing’s claim to Taiwan, but did not go as far as endorsing or accepting that claim, and opposed any unilateral moves by either side to change the status quo.

In their talks on Monday, Mr. Biden sought to assure Mr. Xi that the “one China” policy had not shifted.

“On Taiwan, he laid out in detail that our ‘one China’ policy has not changed, the United States opposes any unilateral changes to the status quo by either side,” the White House’s summary of Mr. Biden’s remarks said. But, it added, Mr. Biden also raised objections about China’s “coercive and increasingly aggressive actions toward Taiwan.”

But, according to Beijing’s account of the talks, Mr. Xi made clear that he saw the United States as a culprit in causing trouble over Taiwan, and he reminded Mr. Biden of how visceral the issue is in China.

“We hope and have always striven for maintaining peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait, but ‘Taiwan independence’ is as incompatible to peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait as fire and water,” Mr. Xi said, according to the Chinese summary.

Taiwan, Mr. Xi also said, is “the core of China’s core interests, the foundation of political foundations in the China-U.S. relationship, and a red line that cannot be crossed in the China-U.S. relationship.”

Joanne Ou, a spokeswoman for Taiwan’s foreign ministry, said of Biden’s comments about Taiwan: “The Ministry of Foreign Affairs expresses its affirmation and sincere thanks for President Biden’s using the occasion of his meeting with the Chinese leader to again publicly express the United States’ firm support for maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait and its commitment to Taiwan’s security.”

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Jim Tankersley
Nov. 14, 2022, 10:30 a.m. ET

Reporting from Bali, Indonesia

President Biden told Xi Jinping this evening that the U.S. and China need to work together on debt relief. That’s a reference to a push administration officials have been making here ahead of the Group of 20 summit in hopes of avoiding a cascading global financial crisis.

Jim Tankersley
Nov. 14, 2022, 10:33 a.m. ET

Reporting from Bali, Indonesia

The short version is, rising global interest rates and other economic destabilizers have left several countries unable to pay their debts — or close to it. America is trying to lead a global effort to help them, including with bailouts from the International Monetary Fund.

Andrés R. Martínez
Nov. 14, 2022, 10:33 a.m. ET

But to make that happen, they need the vulnerable countries’ creditors to agree to write down large chunks of what they owe. In many cases, China is the biggest creditor, and thus far, Beijing has resisted any write-downs.

Chris Buckley
Nov. 14, 2022, 10:06 a.m. ET

Reporting from Bali, Indonesia

Ryan Hass, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former director for China at the National Security Council says: “Both leaders held their ground on key issues without offering concessions in either direction. Even so, Biden and Xi clearly set a tone for their respective governments that tensions must be managed and that neither side seeks unbridled confrontation with the other.”

David E. Sanger
Nov. 14, 2022, 9:48 a.m. ET

At the summit, Biden’s advisers provide clues about U.S. strategy on China.

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President Biden’s team at the meeting with Xi Jinping, China’s leader.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

At any bilateral summit, attention is focused on the two leaders facing off across the negotiating table. But the advisers sitting next to President Biden as he met with Xi Jinping, the Chinese leader, on Monday sent a clear signal about who he listens to.

On the U.S. side, two cabinet members were there: Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. So too was Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, who was the chief architect of the strategy published recently that declared China was the only nation with the intent, the capability and the technology to challenge the United States over the long term — and thus the No. 1 national security concern.

But the other American attendees were of note. R. Nicholas Burns, the American ambassador to China and one of the United States’ most experienced diplomats, has seen little of the most senior Chinese leadership since he arrived in the country, partly because of Covid restrictions and partly because Beijing believes its ambassador to Washington has been kept at arm’s length.

Kurt Campbell, the closest thing the White House has to an Asia czar — his formal title is coordinator for the Indo-Pacific region at the National Security Council — is known for his declaration that the era of U.S. engagement with China has “come to an end” and would be replaced by a new era of constant competition. He was central to building the messaging for the president about the drawing of red lines in the relationship.

A broad array of the NSC’s China team was also at the table, including Laura Rosenberger, a longtime national security aide to Hillary Clinton and then Mr. Biden, who is the senior director for China, and one of her top aides, Rush Doshi.

Mr. Doshi is known for his book entitled “The Long Game,’’ a study of leaked Chinese documents and memoirs that describe China’s grand strategy to overtake the United States as the world’s primary power. The book caused controversy among China scholars, especially those who argue for continuing the kind of cooperative efforts with Beijing that marked the past 30 years.

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Chris Buckley
Nov. 14, 2022, 9:31 a.m. ET

China says that Xi and Biden discussed Taiwan and cooperation.

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President Biden with Xi Jinping in Bali on Monday.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

China has published its summary of what Xi Jinping, the nation’s top leader, and President Biden discussed in their first face-to-face meeting as top leaders of their nations.

The two met for nearly three hours in Bali, Indonesia, ahead of a Group of 20 summit, where the war in Ukraine, the economy and nuclear issues will be central.

Here’s what China’s readout said.

  • COOPERATION: The discussions were “thoroughgoing, frank and constructive.” It said that teams from each government would work on implementing the points of consensus between the two sides, and “promoting the return of China-U.S. relations to a stable track of development.”

  • TAIWAN: Mr. Xi laid out his government’s position on Taiwan, the readout said, calling the issue “the core of China’s core interests, the foundation of political foundations in the China-U.S. relationship, and a red line that cannot be crossed in the China-U.S. relationship.” Mr. Xi also said: “We hope and have always strived for maintaining peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait, but ‘Taiwan independence’ is as incompatible to peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait as fire and water.”

  • RUSSIA: Unlike the White House’s account, the Chinese account did not mention Mr. Xi and Mr. Biden agreeing on opposing Russia’s threat of using nuclear weapons in the Ukraine war.

    According to the Chinese account, Mr. Xi said that “China is highly concerned with the current situation in Ukraine.” Mr. Xi also said that “a complicated issue does not have a simple solution,” and that “confrontation between major powers must be avoided.”

Alan Rappeport
Nov. 14, 2022, 9:25 a.m. ET

Reporting from Bali, Indonesia

Biden concluded his news conference in Indonesia by briefly answering a couple of domestic policy questions. He expressed pessimism that Democrats would be able to maintain control of the House of Representatives, which The Associated Press has not called. In response to a question about what Americans can expect from Congress on the issue of abortion, Biden said it is unlikely that there would be enough votes to codify abortion rights in the United States.

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Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
Alan Rappeport
Nov. 14, 2022, 9:22 a.m. ET

Reporting from Bali, Indonesia

President Biden says, “I’m not suggesting this is kumbaya,” in reference to the U.S. relationship with China. But Biden emphasized that he wants there to be no misunderstandings about the intentions of the two countries as they move forward.

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Chris Buckley
Nov. 14, 2022, 9:18 a.m. ET

Reporting from Bali, Indonesia

Paul Haenle, a former China director on the National Security Council for Presidents George W. Bush and President Obama, said of the summit outcome: “It seems clear that both presidents have come into this meeting buoyed from their respective political events at home.”

Alan Rappeport
Nov. 14, 2022, 9:17 a.m. ET

Reporting from Bali, Indonesia

President Biden described a new framework for dealing with conflict with China in which relevant cabinet secretaries would have meetings with their Chinese counterparts to resolve mutual concerns.

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Alan Rappeport
Nov. 14, 2022, 9:14 a.m. ET

Reporting from Bali, Indonesia

President Biden said that he found Xi Jinping to be “the way he’s always been,” describing the Chinese leader as straightforward and direct and not overly confrontational.

Katie Rogers
Nov. 14, 2022, 9:13 a.m. ET

Reporting from Bali, Indonesia

Biden and Xi talk Taiwan, human rights and Ukraine, the White House says.

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President Biden and Xi Jinping met for nearly three hours in Bali, Indonesia, ahead of a Group of 20 summit, where the war in Ukraine, the economy and nuclear issues will be central.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

The United States has published its summary of what President Biden and China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, discussed in their first face-to-face meeting as top leaders of their nations.

The two met for nearly three hours in Bali, Indonesia, ahead of a Group of 20 summit, where the war in Ukraine, the economy and nuclear issues will be central.

Here’s what the White House said:

  • TAIWAN: Mr. Biden said the United States would oppose any “unilateral changes” to the status quo on Taiwan by either side and that the United States objected to China’s “coercive and increasingly aggressive reactions” toward Taiwan. He objected to China’s “coercive and increasingly aggressive actions toward Taiwan, which undermine peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait and in the broader region, and jeopardize global prosperity.”

  • UKRAINE: The U.S. leader raised the issue of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and threats by the Russians to use nuclear weapons. He and Mr. Xi “reiterated their agreement that a nuclear war should never be fought.”

  • HUMAN RIGHTS: Mr. Biden also raised China’s human rights record with Mr. Xi and said resolving the cases of American citizens detained in China is a priority for the administration. The White House said that Antony J. Blinken, the Secretary of State, would follow up on their discussions in a future visit to China.

  • COOPERATION: The U.S. president stressed that the United States and China must work together on issues such as climate change, health security, and global food security, among other things. Senior officials will be entrusted to maintain communication and “deepen constructive efforts on these and other issues,” the readout said.

  • TIBET: Mr. Biden raised concerns about China’s practices in Xinjiang, Tibet, and Hong Kong, and human rights more broadly, the readout said.

  • DETENTIONS: Mr. Biden said that resolving the cases of American citizens detained in China were a priority.

  • NUCLEAR: Mr. Biden also spoke to Mr. Xi about the war in Ukraine and Russia’s nuclear threats. Mr. Biden and Mr. Xi reiterated their agreement that “a nuclear war should never be fought and can never be won,” the readout said.

  • NORTH KOREA: He also raised concerns about North Korea’s behavior.

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Alan Rappeport
Nov. 14, 2022, 9:12 a.m. ET

Reporting from Bali, Indonesia

President Biden, answering a question from a reporter, said “I absolutely believe their need not be a new cold war.” The president added that he does not believe there will be an imminent attempt by China to invade Taiwan.

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Chris Buckley
Nov. 14, 2022, 9:12 a.m. ET

Reporting from Bali, Indonesia

According to the Chinese account, Xi Jinping said that that “China is highly concerned with the current situation in Ukraine.” Xi also said that “a complicated issue does not have a simple solution,” and that “confrontation between major powers must be avoided.”

Chris Buckley
Nov. 14, 2022, 9:11 a.m. ET

Reporting from Bali, Indonesia

Unlike the White House’s account of the talks, the Chinese account did not mention Xi Jinping and President Biden’s agreeing on opposing Russia’s threat of using nuclear weapons in the Ukraine war.

Alan Rappeport
Nov. 14, 2022, 9:09 a.m. ET

Reporting from Bali, Indonesia

On Ukraine, President Biden said that he and Xi Jinping “reaffirmed our shared belief in the threat or the use of nuclear weapons is totally unacceptable.”

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Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

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Alan Rappeport
Nov. 14, 2022, 9:08 a.m. ET

Reporting from Bali, Indonesia

Biden said the talk with Xi was an “an open and candid conversation about our intentions, and our priorities.” He added that he is not looking for conflict and wants to manage the competition between the two nations responsibly.

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Chris Buckley
Nov. 14, 2022, 9:08 a.m. ET

Reporting from Bali, Indonesia

According to the Chinese summary of the talks, Xi also said: “We hope and have always strived for maintaining peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait, but ‘Taiwan independence’ is as incompatible to peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait as fire and water.”

Alan Rappeport
Nov. 14, 2022, 9:07 a.m. ET

Reporting from Bali, Indonesia

President Biden opens with a mention of domestic politics and the success of Democrats in the midterm elections, noting that “In America, the will of the people prevails.”

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Chris Buckley
Nov. 14, 2022, 8:58 a.m. ET

Reporting from Bali, Indonesia

China’s summary of the talks says that Xi laid out his government’s position on Taiwan, calling the issue “the core of China’s core interests, the foundation of political foundations in the China-U.S. relationship, and a red line that cannot be crossed in the China-U.S. relationship.”

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Chris Buckley
Nov. 14, 2022, 8:54 a.m. ET

Reporting from Bali, Indonesia

China’s official summary of the talks is out and it says that the talks between Xi Jinping and President Biden were “thoroughgoing, frank and constructive.” It says that teams from each government would work on implementing the points of consensus between the two sides, and “promoting the return of China-U.S. relations to a stable track of development.”

Chris Buckley
Nov. 14, 2022, 8:47 a.m. ET

Reporting from Bali, Indonesia

While Biden prepares to give a news conference, the Chinese side is likely to give its own version of the talks through a summary issued by Xinhua, the official news agency. It will be important to see how near or close China’s account of the talks is to the White House’s.

Ana SwansonEdward Wong
Nov. 14, 2022, 8:46 a.m. ET

The U.S.-China standoff is increasingly playing out in tech.

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A semiconductor plant in Suining, China. The Biden administration took action in October to clamp down on the country’s semiconductor industry.Credit...Zhong Min/Feature China/Future Publishing, via Getty Images

In conversations with American executives this spring, top officials in the Biden administration revealed an aggressive plan to counter the Chinese military’s rapid technological advances.

China was using supercomputing and artificial intelligence to develop stealth and hypersonic weapons systems, and to try to crack the U.S. government’s most encrypted messaging, according to intelligence reports. For months, administration officials debated what they could do to hobble the country’s progress.

They saw a path: The Biden administration would use U.S. influence over global technology and supply chains to try to choke off China’s access to advanced chips and chip production tools needed to power those abilities. The goal was to keep Chinese entities that contributed to potential threats far behind their competitors in the United States and in allied nations.

The effort, no less than what the Americans carried out against Soviet industries during the Cold War, gained momentum this year as the United States tested powerful economic tools against Russia as punishment for its invasion of Ukraine, and as China broke barriers in technological development. The Russian offensive and Beijing’s military actions also made the possibility of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan seem more real to U.S. officials.

The administration’s concerns about China’s tech ambitions culminated in October in the unveiling of the most stringent controls by the U.S. government on technology exports to the country in decades — an opening salvo that would ripple through global commerce and could frustrate other governments and companies outside China.

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Jim Tankersley
Nov. 14, 2022, 8:41 a.m. ET

Reporting from Bali, Indonesia

President Biden is about to answer reporters’ questions following his meeting with Xi Jinping. It is much later than normal for a presidential news conference — 9:30 p.m. local time in Bali — and it’s also much warmer. It's a humid 82 degrees at the outdoor amphitheater here.

Chris Buckley
Nov. 14, 2022, 8:29 a.m. ET

Reporting from Bali, Indonesia

According to the U.S. summary of the talks, Biden explained “in detail” that the United States remains committed to the “one China” policy that acknowledges Beijing’s claims to the island, without accepting or endorsing that claim. But Biden also raised objections to China’s “coercive and increasingly aggressive actions toward Taiwan.”

Katie Rogers
Nov. 14, 2022, 8:26 a.m. ET

Reporting from Bali, Indonesia

President Biden also raised China’s human rights record with Xi Jinping and said resolving the cases of American citizens detained in China is a priority for the administration.

Katie Rogers
Nov. 14, 2022, 8:25 a.m. ET

Reporting from Bali, Indonesia

President Biden raised Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and threats by the Russians to use nuclear weapons. Both leaders “reiterated their agreement that a nuclear war should never be fought.”

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Katie Rogers
Nov. 14, 2022, 8:23 a.m. ET

Reporting from Bali, Indonesia

In a readout of the meeting, the White House says that President Biden said that the United States would oppose any “unilateral changes” to the status quo on Taiwan by either side and that the United States objects to China’s “coercive and increasingly aggressive reactions” toward Taiwan.

Katie Rogers
Nov. 14, 2022, 8:23 a.m. ET

Reporting from Bali, Indonesia

The White House said that Antony Blinken, the secretary of state, would follow up on their discussions in a future visit to China.

Chris Buckley
Nov. 14, 2022, 8:14 a.m. ET

Reporting from Bali, Indonesia

Among the Chinese officials in Xi Jinping’s delegation was Ding Xuexiang, a close aide who almost always travels with the top leader and helps him manage party matters. Wang Yi, China’s foreign minister, who was at a rancorous meeting in Anchorage with President Biden’s two senior diplomats early last year, also attended.

Chris Buckley
Nov. 14, 2022, 8:00 a.m. ET

Reporting from Bali, Indonesia

China’s main state broadcaster, CCTV, said online that the meeting between Xi Jinping and President Biden ended at 8:48 p.m. local time in Bali.

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Katie Rogers
Nov. 14, 2022, 8:00 a.m. ET

Reporting from Bali, Indonesia

President Biden is now on his way to deliver a news conference in Bali.

Katie Rogers
Nov. 14, 2022, 7:58 a.m. ET

Reporting from Bali, Indonesia

The White House says that the meeting between President Biden and Xi Jinping, China's leader, has ended, almost three hours after the two first sat down to meet.

Chris BuckleyDavid E. Sanger
Nov. 14, 2022, 7:55 a.m. ET

The U.S. will watch for what Xi says about China’s ties with Russia.

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President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and Xi Jinping of China, meeting in Uzbekistan in September.Credit...Sergei Bobylyov/Sputnik, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

China’s “no-limits” friendship with Russia, which has not wavered since President Vladimir V. Putin invaded Ukraine, has been denounced by the Biden administration. But the relationship is so opaque that U.S. officials disagree on its true nature.

Whether it’s a partnership of convenience or a robust alliance, Beijing and Moscow share a growing interest in frustrating the American agenda, many in Washington believe. In turn, many in China see the combination of new U.S. export controls and NATO support for Ukraine as foreshadowing how Washington could try to contain China, and stymie its claims to Taiwan, a self-ruled island.

This month, Xi Jinping told the visiting German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, that China opposes “the threat or use of nuclear weapons,” an oblique but unusually public reproach to Mr. Putin’s saber rattling with tactical nuclear weapons.

If Mr. Xi cannot say something similar on Monday when he meets face-to-face with President Biden, one senior Biden administration official noted, it will be telling. China sees Russia as a vital counterweight to Western power, and Mr. Xi may hesitate to criticize Mr. Putin in front of Mr. Biden.

“If Putin used nuclear weapons, he would become the public enemy of humankind, opposed by all countries, including China,” said Hu Wei, a foreign policy scholar in Shanghai. But, he added, “If Putin falls, the United States and the West will then focus on strategic containment of China.”

For American officials, the Xi-Putin relationship is a topic of internal debate. Colin Kahl, a senior official in the Pentagon, told reporters last week that Chinese leaders have “been much more willing to signal that this thing is edging toward an alliance as opposed to just a superficial partnership.”

Mr. Biden seems doubtful. “I don’t think there’s a lot of respect that China has for Russia or for Putin,” he said the next day.

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Katie Rogers
Nov. 14, 2022, 7:13 a.m. ET

Reporting from Bali, Indonesia

It has now been over two hours since the two greeted each other for the summit. There was a four-hour space on Biden’s schedule between the meeting and his later news conference, but senior officials would not tell us how long this meeting was expected to go.

Katie Rogers
Nov. 14, 2022, 7:17 a.m. ET

Reporting from Bali, Indonesia

They did say that the composition of the meeting was not going to change — which means that there wouldn’t be a situation where the two meet privately or with a smaller group — and that there would be a break if needed.

Katie RogersJim Tankersley
Nov. 14, 2022, 7:12 a.m. ET

Katie Rogers and

Reporting from Bali, Indonesia

To counter China, Biden courts leaders in Southeast Asia.

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President Biden with Prime Minister Hun Sen of Cambodia at a dinner on Saturday, during a meeting of leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

Before President Biden traveled to Indonesia, he attended a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Cambodia, betting that an in-person appearance would help reinforce his administration’s broad efforts to counter China’s rise, even as ASEAN countries embrace economic ties with Beijing.

“We will build a better future we all say we want to see,” Mr. Biden said at his third ASEAN summit as president, “for all one billion people in our countries.”

The president announced a series of new initiatives between the United States and the ASEAN countries: Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. The initiatives include efforts to promote electric vehicle use in the region, to improve clean-water access and to offer loans to support female entrepreneurs.

Ahead of the summit, ASEAN elevated its relationship with the United States to what is called a comprehensive strategic partnership. The designation puts America on the same footing as China — which established a similar agreement last year — and Australia.

ASEAN leaders at the summit reiterated their strong ties with Beijing while taking pains not to upset Mr. Biden. In a joint statement on Saturday with China, Cambodia reiterated its support for Beijing’s “One China Policy” — including opposition to independence for Taiwan.

But before the summit, a Cambodian official said that U.S.-China relations were critical to regional development in South Asia, and that the ASEAN countries were staying out of the economic competition between Washington and Beijing.

“ASEAN remains neutral in this competition, and we don’t want to choose sides,” Kung Phoak, Cambodia’s secretary of state of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, told CNBC. “ASEAN wants to work closely with both countries.”

Katie Rogers
Nov. 14, 2022, 6:30 a.m. ET

Reporting from Bali, Indonesia

According to Sebastian Smith, a reporter filing updates from the press pool with the president, an American television producer was yanked backwards by a Chinese official after asking Biden if he planned to bring up human rights during the meeting. Two White House officials intervened on the producer’s behalf.

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Matt StevensTiffany May
Nov. 14, 2022, 6:05 a.m. ET

This is the leaders’ first face-to-face meeting, after five phone and video calls.

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President Biden meeting virtually with Xi Jinping, China’s leader, in November 2021.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

President Biden and Xi Jinping have a history — they first met as vice presidents — but Monday’s summit will mark the first time they will sit in the same room together since each became top leader.

They have talked by phone or video call five times in the past 18 months, during which U.S.-China tensions have increased and Mr. Xi has repeatedly warned Mr. Biden against what he sees as meddling in affairs related to Taiwan, the self-governing island that China claims as its own. Here’s a look back at each of those conversations, according to official accounts by both governments:

Feb. 10, 2021

Weeks after his inauguration, Mr. Biden underscored “his fundamental concerns about Beijing’s coercive and unfair economic practices, crackdown in Hong Kong, human rights abuses in Xinjiang, and increasingly assertive actions in the region, including toward Taiwan,” according to a readout of a call released by The White House.

According to the official Chinese account, Mr. Xi cautioned Mr. Biden that “when China and the United States cooperate, both sides gain, and when they fight, both are harmed.” Mr. Xi also called for “re-establishing” dialogue to foster mutual understanding. But he warned Mr. Biden to tread carefully on “matters concerning Chinese sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

Sept. 9, 2021

The two leaders did not speak again for seven months. During a 90-minute call in September 2021, Mr. Biden expressed concern over China’s cyber activities while insisting he and Mr. Xi should set aside their differences to work together on climate change.

The official Chinese summary of the call said that Mr. Xi told Mr. Biden that the U.S. government’s policies toward China had “pushed Chinese-U.S. relations into serious difficulties.”

Nov. 16, 2021

Mr. Biden and Mr. Xi held a virtual summit at Mr. Biden’s request, reflecting his administration’s concern at the depth of the divisions between the countries. But there was no concrete progress after three-and-a-half hours of talks.

The White House said Mr. Biden had raised concerns about human rights abuses and China’s “unfair trade and economic policies.” Mr. Xi said that American support for Taiwan was “playing with fire,” and warned that dividing the world into alliances or blocs would “inevitably bring disaster to the world.”

March 18, 2022

Mr. Biden and Mr. Xi spoke via video call weeks after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. White House officials said the two-hour call had focused on the war, but the official Chinese readout focused on Taiwan.

Mr. Xi warned Mr. Biden that “some people in the United States” had sent the “wrong signal” by supporting independence for Taiwan. And he used an aphorism that suggested he believed the United States was to blame for the conflict in Ukraine.

July 28, 2022

Four months later, Mr. Biden and Mr. Xi confronted each other again about Taiwan during a marathon phone call that lasted more than two hours.

Mr. Biden had vowed in May to use force to defend Taiwan if it were attacked, although he later sought to clarify that he was not changing the longstanding American policy of “strategic ambiguity” if such a conflict were to occur. A planned trip to Taiwan by Speaker Nancy Pelosi had further inflamed tensions.

China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs called it a productive conversation but, in a statement, repeated a phrase it had used the year before: “Playing with fire will set yourself on fire.”

Katie Rogers
Nov. 14, 2022, 5:31 a.m. ET

Reporting from Bali, Indonesia

The meeting will give American officials their first chance at understanding how Mr. Xi plans to deputize people around him to keep lines of communication with the U.S. open. Mr. Xi used a Communist Party congress last month to tighten his grip on domestic power, and a White House official said that they would be looking for “new faces” in attendance at the meeting.

Chris Buckley
Nov. 14, 2022, 5:05 a.m. ET

Xi, more powerful than ever, sees an increasingly perilous world.

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Xi Jinping during the National Congress of the Communist Party in Beijing last month.Credit...Kevin Frayer/Getty Images

Last month, Xi Jinping laid out his priorities for a breakthrough third term in power in a key report to a Communist Party congress. The omission of two phrases exposed his anxieties about an increasingly volatile world where Washington is contesting China’s ascent as an authoritarian superpower.

For two decades, successive Chinese leaders have declared at the congress that the country was in a “period of important strategic opportunity,” implying that China faced no imminent risk of major conflict and could focus more on economic growth. For even longer, leaders have said that “peace and development remain the themes of the era,” suggesting that whatever may be going wrong in the world, the grand trends were on China’s side.

But the two slogans, so unvarying that they rarely drew attention, were not in Mr. Xi’s report to the weeklong congress. Not in his 104-minute speech summarizing the report. Nor in the 72-page Chinese full version given to officials and journalists.

Their exclusion, and Mr. Xi’s somber warning of “dangerous storms” on the horizon, indicated that he believed international hazards have worsened, several experts said. Mr. Xi sees a world made more treacherous by American support for the disputed island of Taiwan, Chinese vulnerability to technology “choke points,” and the plans of Western-led alliances to increase their military presence around Asia.

“Our country has entered a period when strategic opportunity coexists with risks and challenges, and uncertainties and unforeseen factors are rising,” Mr. Xi said. Although China has room for international growth and initiative, he added, “the world has entered a period of turbulence and transformation.”

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Chris Buckley
Nov. 14, 2022, 5:00 a.m. ET

Reporting from Bali, Indonesia

Xi told Biden that the current state of China-U.S. relations is not in the interests of the two countries “and is not what the international community expects of us.” He added: “We need to find the right direction for the bilateral relationship going forward, and elevate the relationship.”

Katie Rogers
Nov. 14, 2022, 4:47 a.m. ET

Reporting from Bali, Indonesia

Biden was joined in the meeting by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser. All the U.S. and Chinese officials were wearing masks, except for the two leaders. “I believe there is little substitute for face-to-face communication.” Biden said, adding that he hoped the two leaders could find “ways to work together on urgent global issues that require our mutual cooperation.”

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Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
Katie Rogers
Nov. 14, 2022, 4:48 a.m. ET

Reporting from Bali, Indonesia

Biden told Xi that he “looked forward to the honest dialogue we’ve always had, and I thank you for the opportunity.”

Katie Rogers
Nov. 14, 2022, 4:41 a.m. ET

Reporting from Bali, Indonesia

Both Biden and Xi arrived early for their meeting. The pair have known each other since Biden was vice president and last saw each other in person in 2017. They shook hands for several seconds and Biden, who was smiling widely, touched Xi’s arm as the two looked toward a wall of reporters.

David E. Sanger
Nov. 14, 2022, 4:33 a.m. ET

Biden’s new national security strategy points to China’s ‘intent to reshape the international order.’

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President Biden made clear last month that he was more worried about China’s moves than he was about a declining Russia.Credit...Kenny Holston for The New York Times

Last month, President Biden released his 48-page national security strategy, which focused relentlessly on China even as Russia wages war in Ukraine. In the document, which every new administration is required to issue, Mr. Biden made clear that over the long term he was more worried about China’s moves to “layer authoritarian governance with a revisionist foreign policy” than he was about a declining, battered Russia.

“Russia and the P.R.C. pose different challenges,” Mr. Biden wrote, using the abbreviation for the People’s Republic of China. “Russia poses an immediate threat to the free and open international system, recklessly flouting the basic laws of the international order today, as its brutal war of aggression against Ukraine has shown.”

But more than eight months after the invasion of Ukraine, the Russian military appears less fearsome than it did when the first drafts of the document circulated in the White House in December.

China “is the only country with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military and technological power to advance that objective,” the president wrote.

The document paved the way for the Pentagon to publish its National Defense Strategy paper a few weeks later, which declared that China “remains our most consequential strategic competitor for the coming decades.”

The anxieties have been magnified by China’s plans to expand and modernize its still relatively limited nuclear arsenal to one that could reach at least 1,000 warheads by 2030, according to the Pentagon. China sees threats in American-led security initiatives, including proposals to help build nuclear-powered submarines for Australia.

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Keith Bradsher
Nov. 14, 2022, 4:12 a.m. ET

Reporting from Beijing

Ahead of the summit, China urged the United States to work together to manage differences between the sides and improve relations. “We hope that the United States will meet China halfway,” a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Mao Ning, told reporters in Beijing on Monday.

Chris BuckleyDavid E. Sanger
Nov. 14, 2022, 4:01 a.m. ET

One expert calls it ‘the first superpower summit of the Cold War Version 2.0.’

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China’s leader, Xi Jinping, with Joe Biden in 2015, when he was vice president, at Andrews Air Force Base, Md.Credit...Carolyn Kaster/Associated Press

The meeting between President Biden and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, on neutral ground in Bali, has a Cold War feel: more about managing potential conflict than finding common ground. The rancor between the United States and China on a range of issues means that even short-term stabilization and cooperation on shared challenges — climate change, containing North Korea’s nuclear program or stopping pandemics — could be fragile.

“This is in a sense the first superpower summit of the Cold War Version 2.0,” said Evan S. Medeiros, a Georgetown University professor who was President Barack Obama’s top adviser on Asia-Pacific affairs. “Will both leaders discuss, even implicitly, the terms of coexistence amid competition? Or, by default, will they let loose the dogs of unconstrained rivalry?”

Neither side calls it a Cold War, a term evoking a world divided between Western and Soviet camps bristling with nuclear arsenals. And the differences are real between that era and this one, with its vast trade flows and technological commerce between China and Western powers.

The Apple iPhone and many other staples of American life are assembled almost entirely in China. Instead of trying to build a formal bloc of allies as the Soviets did, Beijing has sought to influence nations through major projects that create dependency, including wiring them with Chinese-made communications networks.

Even so, the recent declarations surrounding Mr. Xi’s appointment to a third term and Mr. Biden’s newly released national security, defense and nuclear strategies have described an era of growing global uncertainty heightened by competition — economic, military, technological, political — between their countries.

“It may not be the Cold War, with a capital C and capital W, as in a replay of the U.S.-Soviet experience,” Professor Medeiros said. But, he added, “because of China’s substantial capabilities and its global reach, this cold war will be more challenging in many ways than the previous one.”

Despite their differences, Mr. Biden and Mr. Xi want to avoid pent-up tensions exploding into a crisis that could wreak economic havoc. Mr. Biden said last week that he was “looking for competition, not — not conflict. And Mr. Xi — who wants to put China’s growth back on track after heavy blows from Covid restrictions and problems in the housing market — told the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations that he wants to “find the right way to get along.”

Alan Rappeport
Nov. 14, 2022, 3:15 a.m. ET

Reporting from Bali, Indonesia

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen encourages China to focus on vaccinations, as Covid rules slow its economy.

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Receiving a Covid vaccine in Wuhan, China, last year. China has focused on developing homegrown vaccines but has yet to roll out one that uses mRNA technology.Credit...Getty Images

BALI, Indonesia — Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen said on Monday that she hopes China is able to roll out a more effective vaccination campaign to combat the coronavirus. Thus far, Beijing has largely contained its spread with strict lockdowns and travel restrictions that have slowed its economy and weighed on global economic growth.

Speaking on the sidelines of the Group of 20 gathering, ahead of a meeting between President Biden and China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, Ms. Yellen said the United States was prepared to help China in its efforts to stop the spread of the virus.

“I believe that we have offered China American mRNA vaccines, and I believe that they have not been interested in taking us up on that,” Ms. Yellen told reporters, referring to the vaccine technology that was first developed in the West and has been adopted in many countries.

Ms. Yellen added: “To the extent that it might be helpful to them, certainly we want to see them be able to deal effectively with the pandemic, both for their own sake and the sake of the entire world. So we certainly stand ready to be of assistance.”

A Treasury official said that Ms. Yellen was not suggesting that the United States would donate vaccines to China, but rather was noting Beijing’s refusal to import vaccines produced by U.S. drug companies.

China has focused on developing homegrown vaccines but has yet to roll out one with the mRNA technology used in the inoculations that have proved most effective. An mRNA vaccine that China developed was approved for use in Indonesia in September.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany said in Beijing this month that he had been assured that China would accelerate the approval process for Covid-19 vaccines made by the German company BioNTech and that, in turn, he would push for Chinese vaccines to be granted regulatory approval by the European Union.

China has maintained a zero-tolerance approach to Covid, and Ms. Yellen said that Beijing’s pandemic policies were among the reasons that the Chinese economy is slowing. Last week, China softened some of its Covid restrictions, which pleased investors, but a rise in infections has raised questions about whether measures will be tightened again.

The Treasury secretary will be participating in Mr. Biden’s meeting with Mr. Xi later on Monday, and she is expected to meet with Yi Gang, the governor of the People’s Bank of China, later this week. She told The New York Times on Saturday that she hopes the meetings will help “stabilize” the relationship between the United States and China and improve communication between the world’s two largest economies.

“We’ve been very clear that we have national security concerns and would like to address those,” Ms. Yellen said on Monday. Those concerns, she said, include the dependence of American supply chains on China for minerals that are used in batteries and solar panels.

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