During an occasionally contentious phone chat on Thursday, President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping decided to set the date for their first in-person summit. Xi also cautioned the United States not to “play with fire” in Taiwan.
The summit would be their first in-person encounter as leaders, despite the fact that this was their fifth phone or video chat since Biden entered office a year and a half ago. The time and place have not been specified.
An unnamed US source claimed that Biden and Xi “discussed the value of meeting face-to-face and agreed to have their teams follow up to locate a mutually agreeable time to do so.”
The call, which lasted two hours and seventeen minutes, was characterized by both parties as a lively discussion of the numerous disagreements between the two largest economies in the world.
According to China’s state-run Xinhua news agency, Xi spoke out strongly against US policy toward Taiwan, a democratic island with strong connections to the US that China nevertheless views as a part of its territory.
