White House: US and China Leaders Agree to Meet Again

"The date is not decided"

The White House announced on the 20th (local time) that U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping have agreed to hold a follow-up bilateral summit.

[Image source=Yonhap News]

John Kirby, White House National Security Council (NSC) Coordinator for Strategic Communications, responded to a question during a press briefing about whether the U.S. and Chinese leaders would meet again soon by saying, "They have agreed to meet again. However, the date has not been set."

Earlier, the U.S. and Chinese leaders held a bilateral face-to-face meeting in San Francisco on the occasion of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit on the 15th. This was their second in-person summit following the meeting in Bali, Indonesia, last November. If the U.S. and Chinese leaders hold a third summit, it is likely that discussions will lean toward President Biden visiting China, as is customary.

Coordinator Kirby explained, "What is really important now is to reopen communication channels between military authorities at the level of theater commanders or below," adding, "That is the communication channel we are most urgently trying to restore."

This emphasized that the implementation of restoring military dialogue channels, agreed upon by the U.S. and Chinese leaders on the 15th, is the biggest issue between the two countries. Since then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan in August last year, military dialogue channels between the U.S. and China had been severed for over a year.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.