THE White House is making plans for a face-to-face meeting between US President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping in San Francisco next month as the two countries seek to stabilise troubled relations, the Washington Post reported on Thursday (Oct 5).

Ties between the world’s two largest economies have been strained in recent years due to a number of issues including Taiwan, the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic, allegations of spying, human rights issues and trade tariffs, among others.

The newspaper, which cited senior unnamed US officials, quoted one of them saying the possibility of a meeting was “pretty firm”.

“We’re beginning the process” of planning, the official was quoted as saying by the newspaper.

The meeting would follow other high-level engagements between the two countries in recent months that have seen visits from US officials to China like Secretary of State Antony Blinken in June, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen in July and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo in August.

More recently, Blinken met Chinese Vice-President Han Zheng in New York and US national security adviser Jake Sullivan met Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Malta.

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The Chinese embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Washington Post report. The White House did not have an immediate comment.

Biden and Xi’s last meeting was on the sidelines of the Group of 20 (G20) summit in Indonesia in November 2022, which was their first in-person meeting since Biden became president. They previously had five exchanges by phone and video conference after Biden took office.

China’s top security agency hinted last month that any meeting between Xi and Biden will depend on the United States “showing sufficient sincerity”.

US officials such as Raimondo and Yellen have recently said the United States did not want to decouple from China but Beijing has expressed concern over US approval of arms sales and military financing to Taiwan.

San Francisco will host an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in November that Xi may attend. Xi recently skipped the G20 summit in New Delhi that Biden attended. REUTERS