US President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping last met in November 2022 in Indonesia at a meeting of the G20, the group of the most important world economies. There they both emphasized the importance of personal diplomacy.
However, relations have cooled since then, especially after the Americans shot down a suspected Chinese spy balloon in February this year. The Chinese government called this an overreaction by the Americans.
In the months that followed, China accused the US of holding back the country’s development, for example by erecting trade barriers against Chinese technology, and Biden called Xi “a dictator” and “a ticking time bomb.”
Four US government officials have visited China in recent months to take the chill out of the air.
The meeting in November could take place within the framework of APEC, an economic partnership of which 21 countries bordering the Pacific Ocean are members. If Xi does not come, it can be seen as a sign of weakness, as happened at the last G20 summit in New Delhi in India in September, where the Chinese leader failed to attend, The Washington Post writes.