(Deutsche Welle Chinese Network) According to Reuters, Politico and CNN reports on Thursday (November 11), US President Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping are expected to hold an online summit on the 15th next Monday. US officials believe that direct contact with Xi Jinping is the best way to prevent Sino-US relations from going into conflict.
The White House declined to comment on this on the 11th, and Chinese officials did not immediately comment. The last conversation between Biden and Xi Jinping was on September 9. A senior US official said that the 90-minute conversation mainly involved economic issues, climate change and the new crown epidemic. Biden has been eager to hold face-to-face talks with Xi Jinping in an attempt to ease tensions with China on Taiwan and a range of other issues.
US officials had hoped that Biden would meet with Xi Jinping during the G20 summit in Rome two weeks ago, but Xi Jinping has not left China since the outbreak of the new crown epidemic. A senior US government official said that there is no news to announce. The official told Reuters: “We agree in principle to hold a virtual bilateral meeting before the end of the year. We are discussing at the working level to confirm the details.”
The White House described the upcoming meeting as part of the ongoing US effort to “responsibly manage” the competition between the two countries.
Xi Jinping intends to invite Biden to attend the Beijing Winter Olympics
The Beijing Winter Olympics continue to be under pressure from the international community.
On the other hand, US media CNBC quoted two sources on the 11th to report that Xi Jinping may invite Biden to attend the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. Reuters analyzed that when Biden pressured China on human rights issues, such an invitation might put him in an embarrassing situation. Biden is unlikely to go to Beijing to participate in meetings of any kind; in addition, Biden did not participate in the Summer Olympics in Tokyo, and Japan is an important ally of the United States.
The White House and the National Security Council declined to comment on how the president will respond to such an invitation. In addition, according to two Western diplomats, the G7 is still discussing a possible “diplomatic boycott” of the Beijing Winter Olympics, which means that athletes will participate in the competition, but the head of state will not attend.
These officials said they have not yet made a joint decision on the government’s attendance at the meeting. Activists called for a global boycott of what they called the “genocide games,” and urged the International Olympic Committee to postpone or transfer the venue of the Olympic Games on the grounds that China had violated the human rights of Uyghurs.
The US State Department condemned China’s large-scale detention of ethnic minorities and political brainwashing of them. The US government estimates that these minorities are engaged in forced labor in approximately 1,200 re-education camps. In April of this year, US State Department spokesperson Ned Price said that coordinating the boycott of the Winter Olympics is something “of course we want to discuss with our allies.” The State Council later retracted this comment, saying that it did not discuss issues related to a total boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics.
But the differences between the two sides continue to ferment. A group of US senators led by Republican Senator Mitt Romney proposed to exclude government funding for the Olympic Games in the upcoming defense spending bill. According to the US media Politico, at the G20 summit in Rome, the United States and Canada blocked the inclusion of text promoting the Beijing Winter Olympics in the joint statement.
(Reuters, CNBC)
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