Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi (R) shakes hands with U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan at Yanqi Lake in Beijing on August 27, 2024.
Ng Han Juan | AFP | Getty Images
BEIJING – U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping are scheduled to speak by phone in the “coming weeks,” the White House said on Wednesday.
The announcement comes amid a visit by US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan to Beijing this week to meet with Wang Yi, China's top diplomat.
The two sides said their military leaders would also hold a call in the near future.
Chen added that plans are underway for a second round of U.S.-China talks on artificial intelligence. The White House said John Podesta, the president’s senior adviser for international climate policy, will travel to China soon, without specifying a date.
In official statements issued on Sullivan's visit, the two countries maintained their positions on technology restrictions, Taiwan, the South China Sea, and Ukraine.
Biden will not run for re-election in November after this summer, when he conceded the nomination to his running mate Kamala Harris. The White House statement did not name the presidents, instead referring to plans for a “leaders-level call.”
The Chinese statement used its typical language of “two heads of state” and said the two sides were discussing “a new round of interaction,” according to a CNBC translation for Chinese.
Biden and Xi had a nearly two-hour phone call in early April, after the two leaders met in November 2023 on the sidelines of a summit in Woodside, California.
High-level engagement between the world's two largest economies has not been easy in recent years amid rising tensions and restrictions due to Covid-19.
Then-US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan in August 2022 and the high-profile “balloon incident” in February 2023 further strained relations between them, leading to the suspension of some planned talks.
First visit by US security adviser since 2016
Sullivan arrived in Beijing on Tuesday, wrapped up two days of meetings with Wang on Wednesday, and is scheduled to leave on Thursday. This is his first trip to China as national security adviser, though he has met with Wang multiple times in recent years.
The last official visit to China by a US national security adviser was in 2016, when Susan Rice traveled to Beijing during the Obama administration.
While the outcome of next November’s presidential election remains unclear, getting tough with Beijing is a rare issue on which both American political parties agree.
Harris's current national security adviser, Phil Gordon, told a Council on Foreign Relations event in May that the “China challenge” is much greater than Taiwan, and requires ensuring that Beijing “does not have the advanced technology, intelligence, and military capabilities that could challenge us.”
