Biden meets Chinese foreign minister

 

For U.S.-China bilateral relations, the one-China principle and the three China-U.S. joint communiques are the most important political foundations, which must be "earnestly" maintained, and distractions must be removed, visiting Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Friday.

The top Chinese diplomat made the remarks in his meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden at the White House, which senior administration officials said lasted for "roughly an hour".

Wang, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and director of the Office of the Central Commission for Foreign Affairs, first conveyed the greetings from Chinese President Xi Jinping to Biden, who asked Wang also to relay his greetings to Xi.

Wang said the purpose of his visit was to communicate with the U.S. side to conscientiously implement the important consensus the two heads of state reached during their first in-person summit in Bali, Indonesia last November.

Then on the basis of returning to the Bali agenda, the two sides "look out on San Francisco", and work to promote the stabilization of China-U.S. relations and return it to the track of healthy and stable development, Wang said, according to a Chinese readout of the meeting.

The readout does not say if a future summit is to be underway for the two presidents in San Francisco, the venue for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Economic Leaders' Week in November.

The U.S. senior administration officials told reporters in a press call Friday evening that both sides have confirmed to work together towards a meeting between Biden and Xi in the California city.

Wang told Biden that China attaches importance to the U.S. hopes of stabilizing and improving relations with China.

"We should act with a sense of responsibility to history, to the people and to the world and work in line with the three principles of mutual respect, peaceful co-existence and win-win cooperation, as proposed by President Xi Jinping, to push for the stabilization and improvement of the China-U.S. relationship," the minister said.

That not only serves the fundamental interests of both countries and the peoples, but also meets the common expectations of the international community, he added.

Biden emphasized that both the United States and China need to manage competition in the relationship responsibly and maintain open lines of communication, according to a release from the White House.

It said that the U.S. president underscored that the United States and China must work together to address global challenges.