xi jinping visit to us

China’s Xi Jinping arrives in US ahead of summit with Joe Biden

Xi is on his first visit to the US in six years as Washington looks to cool tensions with Beijing.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has arrived in the United States for his first visit in six years, after US President Joe Biden said his goal in their bilateral talks this week was to restore normal communications with Beijing, including military-to-military contacts.

Xi is due to meet Biden near San Francisco on Wednesday morning US time, before attending the annual summit of the 21-member Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) grouping.

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The summit will be their first face-to-face meeting in a year and follows months of high-level meetings to prepare the ground, after tensions between the two countries spiked over issues from trade to human rights and the pandemic.

Speaking ahead of his departure, Biden said his goal was simply to improve the bilateral relationship.

“We’re not trying to decouple from China. What we’re trying to do is change the relationship for the better,” Biden told reporters at the White House before heading to San Francisco.

Asked what he hoped to achieve at the meeting, he said he wanted “to get back on a normal course of corresponding; being able to pick up the phone and talk to one another if there’s a crisis; being able to make sure our [militaries] still have contact with one another”.

Xi waved from the door of his Air China plane before walking down the steps to meet US officials, including Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and US Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns, who were waiting on the tarmac.

He is on his first visit to US since 2017 when he met then president Donald Trump.

China, which regularly talks about “red lines” on issues such as the self-ruled island Taiwan, which it claims as its own and its expansive claims in the South China Sea , has been more circumspect about its expectations for the summit.

A spokesman for China’s foreign ministry mentioned only “in-depth communication” and “major issues concerning world peace” when asked about the meeting this week.

Nevertheless, analysts said the very fact the talks were taking place was significant.

“The importance of the much-expected meeting between President Biden and President Xi in San Francisco cannot be understated, no matter the likely shallowness of the outcomes,” Alicia Garcia Herrero of investment banking group Natixis wrote in an analysis ahead of the summit.

Protests expected

Crowds gathered along the route of Xi’s motorcade to the luxury hotel where the Chinese delegation is staying.

Some held signs that read “End CCP,” the initials of Chinese Communist Party. Another sign read “Warmly Welcome President Xi Jinping” and was stuck to concrete bollards.

Outside the hotel, several hundred Beijing supporters waved US and Chinese flags as they waited and played the patriotic song Ode to the Motherland through loudspeakers

Scuffles broke out with the few anti-Xi protesters who were there, but police quickly intervened to restore calm.

Pro-China and anti-China demonstrators also gathered near the Moscone Center, the venue where many of the APEC meetings were being held. Larger protests, including by rights groups critical of Xi’s policies in Tibet, Hong Kong and towards Muslim Uyghurs, are expected near the summit venue on Wednesday.

Xi and Biden are expected to meet at Filoli Estate, a country house museum about 40km (25 miles) south of San Francisco, the Associated Press news agency reported, citing three senior officials in the US administration who requested anonymity. The venue has not yet been confirmed by the White House and Chinese government.

While economic issues are likely to be high on the agenda of the meeting, including steps to curb the production of the potent synthetic opioid drug fentanyl , increasing geopolitical tensions are likely to dominate discussions.

White House National Security Spokesperson John Kirby told reporters that Biden and Xi would talk about the Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza as well as Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine .

While Washington has sought to reset ties with China, it has also signalled that will not be at the expense of key US concerns.

Biden is “not going to be afraid to – to confront where confrontation is needed on issues where we don’t see eye to eye with President Xi and the PRC,” Kirby said, using the initials for the People’s Republic of China.

On Tuesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken told APEC ministers that the US believed in “a region where economies are free to choose their own path … where goods, ideas, people flow lawfully and freely”.

Blinken did not mention China by name, but his language echoed US rhetoric in recent years in which Washington has accused China of bullying smaller countries in the Asia Pacific and trying to undermine what the US and its allies call the “rules-based” international order.

China Brief: Xi Gears Up for Long-Awaited U.S. Trip

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Xi Gears Up for Long-Awaited U.S. Trip

The chinese leader will meet biden on the sidelines of a san francisco summit in his first visit to the united states since 2017..

• Foreign & Public Diplomacy
• United States
• James Palmer

Welcome to  Foreign Policy ’s China Brief.

The highlights this week: The White House confirms Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to the United States later this month, the Smithsonian National Zoo’s giant pandas depart Washington, and another Chinese financial executive faces a corruption investigation.

Sign up to receive China Brief in your inbox every Tuesday.

Xi’s U.S. Visit Confirmed

The White House has officially confirmed Chinese President Xi Jinping’s first visit to the United States since 2017, although the diplomatic details have yet to be hammered out. Xi will attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in San Francisco later this month—a long-anticipated appearance, even if the specifics aren’t yet guaranteed.

The APEC summit starts on Nov. 11, but Xi may fly in later; the leaders’ meeting is on Nov. 17. Given events during Xi’s visit to South Africa in August, where he unexpectedly missed an important speech—perhaps after becoming ill in his travels—the Chinese leader may also build an extra day or two in to his U.S. visit. The Chinese Consulate in San Francisco is already organizing diaspora groups to welcome Xi to the city with fanfare.

Xi will meet U.S. President Joe Biden on the sidelines of the APEC summit, which will mark their first time together in person since a relatively amiable meeting in Bali, Indonesia, during the G-20 summit a year ago. The U.S.-China relationship was already bad then, but it suffered in the months afterward—especially during the spy balloon crisis . The Biden administration has since engaged in a lot of diplomatic repair work, with mixed reception in China.

What does each side want out of the Xi-Biden meeting? China’s priority is likely its stumbling economy. Geopolitical tensions manifest in China as xenophobic crackdowns on foreign businesses and in the United States as growing restraints on technology exports to China; the situation has made U.S. firms increasingly wary of doing business in China. That isn’t the main burden on the Chinese economy—a collapsing real estate market and a local government debt crisis are—but any relief helps.

The United States will prioritize security talks, focusing on nuclear arms control and military-to-military communication . U.S. diplomats fear that a more confrontational attitude toward China, including breaking off some channels due to tensions over Taiwan, could lead to a clash neither side wants. The frequency of near-misses both at sea and in the air of late has augmented those concerns, especially given continuing tensions around Philippine naval activity in the South China Sea.

China has an obvious interest in avoiding an accidental war with the United States, but aggressive nationalism is still de rigueur in Chinese military and security circles, and backing down is hard. One working model here for both Beijing and Washington may be China’s restored relationship with Australia, where a change of government allowed for a reset.

After a quarrel sparked by Australia’s measures against Chinese political interference and a 2020 call for an investigation into the origins of COVID-19, China targeted Australia with an economic coercion campaign similar to those it used against Japan, South Korea, Lithuania, Norway, and others. But the Australian economy shrugged off Chinese hostility as the country diversified its soaring exports ; the coercion campaign failed.

China has since backed down from its bans on Australian coal and other imports, as well as releasing Australian journalist Cheng Lei , who was detained on national security charges in August 2020, at the nadir of relations. A recent visit to China by Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was full of smiles and new agreements. It seems like an Australian victory, although the Australian government also put behind-the-scenes pressure on both Australian intelligence and strategy think tanks to go a little softer on Beijing.

Yet Canberra is in a strikingly different geopolitical position from the United States. As fierce as Australian domestic politics can be, it does not compare to the allegations thrown around Washington about politicians’ supposedly treacherous connections to Beijing. Nor does Australia occupy anything close to the U.S. place in the Chinese public psyche. The conflicts between China and the United States aren’t going away, even if they are managed more carefully.

What We’re Following

Pandas depart Washington. As Xi prepares to arrive in the United States, more beloved figures of Chinese diplomacy have left Washington: the Smithsonian National Zoo’s giant pandas . First brought to the United States in 1972, the animals—always technically on loan from China—represented a hope for friendship between the two countries that now seems distant.

China has long employed panda diplomacy as part of a softer approach to the world than the so-called wolf warrior diplomacy that has come to dominate under Xi, but by next year there may be no pandas left in any U.S. zoos (and possibly Australian ones). The panda has also become part of China’s self-image, even representing the country in its own domestic media —sometimes as strong, powerful, and resistant.

However, the association of the hapless bear and the Chinese nation is recent: The rare panda was basically absent from the popular consciousness before the 20th century and not often depicted in art. The arrival of the panda Chi-Chi at the London Zoo in 1958 brought the animals global attention, and Beijing picked up on it—along with the World Wildlife Fund’s adoption of the panda as a symbol of environmental protection in 1961.

A quiet funeral. Former Chinese Premier Li Keqiang’s funeral passed without incident , thanks in part to restrictions on mourning. (As I noted last week, he also wasn’t a particularly popular figure in the first place.) Nevertheless, Li seems to have become a temporary symbol for Chinese people still holding out hope that the country can return to the days of economic and perhaps even political reform, since he was seen as a more technocratic figure than Xi.

There remains some skepticism about the claim that Li died of a heart attack—perhaps reflective of how much China’s urban upper-middle class has come to distrust the Chinese Communist Party’s word.

FP’s Most Read This Week

• The Storm of Dissent Brewing in the State Department by Robbie Gramer
• Ehud Barak on Israel’s Next Steps by Ravi Agrawal
• Why the Global South Is Accusing America of Hypocrisy by Oliver Stuenkel

Tech and Business

Executive disappearances. This week, Chinese authorities opened a corruption investigation into Zhang Hongli (also known as Lee Zhang), a former executive vice president at the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, one of the country’s largest state banks. He is just one in a series of financial figures to be brought down as part of sector-wide investigations in the last two years.

With experience at Goldman Sachs, Zhang was once a rising star in the industry who played a key role in building dubious links with foreign financial institutions and was close to the family of former Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao . (Wen’s billionaire wife, Zhang Peili, built a small empire of her own while her husband was in power.)

Meanwhile, Chen Shaojie, the head of a major gaming platform, was reportedly disappeared by authorities a few weeks ago. It’s common for business figures to be detained for weeks or longer, such as the still-missing banking executive Bao Fan. Such measures can reflect party intimidation of a sector, genuine investigations, or officials’ attempts to seize control of businesses.

Gallup leaves China. The polling and consultancy group Gallup has become the latest foreign firm to leave China, under pressure from authorities who seem increasingly intolerant of independent investigation of Chinese public opinion. As global opinion of China has declined, foreign polling firms have come under attack from Chinese media.

That is a big problem. Chinese officials’ own grasp of what’s happening in China is often weak, and public opinion is especially hard to gauge in a heavily censored and politically threatening environment. The more independent investigation gets shut down, the less the world knows.

James Palmer is a deputy editor at Foreign Policy . Twitter:  @BeijingPalmer

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Readout of President Joe   Biden’s Meeting with President Xi Jinping of the People’s Republic of   China

President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. today held a Summit with President Xi Jinping of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), in Woodside, California.  The two leaders held a candid and constructive discussion on a range of bilateral and global issues including areas of potential cooperation and exchanged views on areas of difference. 

President Biden emphasized that the United States and China are in competition, noting that the United States would continue to invest in the sources of American strength at home and align with allies and partners around the world.  He stressed that the United States would always stand up for its interests, its values, and its allies and partners.  He reiterated that the world expects the United States and China to manage competition responsibly to prevent it from veering into conflict, confrontation, or a new Cold War.

The two leaders made progress on a number of key issues. They welcomed the resumption of bilateral cooperation to combat global illicit drug manufacturing and trafficking, including synthetic drugs like fentanyl, and establishment of a working group for ongoing communication and law enforcement coordination on counternarcotics issues. President Biden stressed that this new step will advance the U.S. whole-of-government effort to counter the evolving threat of illicit synthetic drugs and to reduce the diversion of precursor chemicals and pill presses to drug cartels.

The two leaders welcomed the resumption of high-level military-to-military communication, as well as the U.S.-China Defense Policy Coordination Talks and the U.S.-China Military Maritime Consultative Agreement meetings.  Both sides are also resuming telephone conversations between theater commanders.

The leaders affirmed the need to address the risks of advanced AI systems and improve AI safety through U.S.-China government talks.

The two leaders exchanged views on key regional and global challenges.  President Biden underscored the United States’ support for a free and open Indo-Pacific that is connected, prosperous, secure, and resilient.  The President reaffirmed the United States’ ironclad commitment to defending our Indo-Pacific allies.  The President emphasized the United States’ enduring commitment to freedom of navigation and overflight, adherence to international law, maintaining peace and stability in the South China Sea and East China Sea, and the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula .

President Biden reaffirmed that the United States, alongside allies and partners, will continue to support Ukraine’s defense against Russian aggression, to ensure Ukraine emerges from this war as a democratic, independent, sovereign, and prosperous nation that can deter and defend itself against future aggression.  Regarding the Israel-Hamas conflict, the President reiterated U.S. support for Israel’s right to defend itself against terrorism and emphasized the importance of all countries using their influence to prevent escalation and expansion of the conflict.

President Biden underscored the universality of human rights and the responsibility of all nations to respect their international human rights commitments. He raised concerns regarding PRC human rights abuses, including in Xinjiang, Tibet, and Hong Kong.  On Taiwan, President Biden emphasized that our one China policy has not changed and has been consistent across decades and administrations.  He reiterated that the United States opposes any unilateral changes to the status quo from either side, that we expect cross-strait differences to be resolved by peaceful means, and that the world has an interest in peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait.  He called for restraint in the PRC’s use of military activity in and around the Taiwan Strait.  President Biden also raised continued concerns about the PRC’s unfair trade policies, non-market economic practices, and punitive actions against U.S. firms, which harm American workers and families.  The President emphasized that the United States will continue to take necessary actions to prevent advanced U.S. technologies from being used to undermine our own national security, without unduly limiting trade and investment. 

The President again emphasized that it remains a priority to resolve the cases of American citizens who are wrongfully detained or subject to exit bans in China.  

The two leaders reiterated the importance of ties between the people of the United States and the People’s Republic of China, and committed to work towards a significant further increase in scheduled passenger flights early next year, in parallel with actions to restore full implementation of the U.S.-China air transportation agreement, to support exchanges between the two countries. The two leaders also encouraged the expansion of educational, student, youth, cultural, sports, and business exchanges.

The two leaders underscored the importance of working together to accelerate efforts to tackle the climate crisis in this critical decade.  They welcomed recent positive discussions between their respective special envoys for climate, including on national actions to reduce emissions in the 2020s, on common approaches toward a successful COP 28, and on operationalizing the Working Group on Enhancing Climate Action in the 2020s to accelerate concrete climate actions. President Biden stated that the United States stands ready to work together with the PRC to address transnational challenges, such as health security and debt and climate finance in developing countries and emerging markets.

Building on the November 2022 meeting in Bali where they discussed the development of principles related to U.S. – China relations, the two leaders acknowledged the efforts of their respective teams to explore best practices for the relationship.  They stressed the importance of responsibly managing competitive aspects of the relationship, preventing conflict, maintaining open lines of communication, cooperating on areas of shared interest, upholding the UN Charter, and all countries treating each other with respect and finding a way to live alongside each other peacefully. The leaders welcomed continued discussions in this regard.

The two leaders agreed that their teams will follow-up on their discussions in San Francisco with continued high-level diplomacy and interactions, including visits in both directions and ongoing working-level consultations in key areas, including on commercial, economic, financial, Asia-Pacific, arms control and nonproliferation, maritime, export control enforcement, policy-planning, agriculture, and disability issues.

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China and US pledge to fight climate crisis ahead of Xi-Biden summit

Announcement fuels hope rivals can use Apec summit as a chance to reduce tensions

China and the US have pledged to work together more closely to fight global heating, declaring the climate crisis “one of the greatest challenges of our time”, hours before a key meeting in San Francisco between Joe Biden and Xi Jinping .

The announcement further fuels hopes that the two nations can mend relations after years of turmoil over issues including trade, human rights and the future of Taiwan.

In a joint statement after climate talks in the US, they pledged to make a success of a crucial UN climate summit starting at the end of this month in Dubai and recommitted to the 2015 Paris climate accord goals of holding global heating to “well below” 2C, while pursuing efforts to limit the increase to 1.5C.

“The United States and China recognise that the climate crisis has increasingly affected countries around the world,” the statement said. “They will work together … to rise up to one of the greatest challenges of our time for present and future generations of humankind.”

Xi and Biden’s summit will be the first face-to-face meeting between the two leaders in a year and has been billed by US officials as an opportunity to reduce friction in what many see as the world’s most dangerous rivalry.

It comes on the back of a series of agreements aimed at setting a floor for the relationship. As well as the climate agreement that was published on Tuesday, Beijing and Washington are expected to reach a deal on controlling the flow of fentanyl from China to the US.

The US is also hoping to reopen military dialogues, which have largely been frozen since the visit of Nancy Pelosi, the then speaker of the House of Representatives, to Taiwan last year.

With elections in Taipei in January expected to strain cross-strait relations, Taiwan will also be high on the agenda for the Xi-Biden talks. Beijing is keen to challenge what it sees as a worrying shift in the Biden administration towards more support for the self-governing island, which China claims as part of its territory.

In advance of the summit, Chinese state media have adopted a warmer tone towards the US. The official Communist party newspaper, the People’s Daily, said in its overseas edition: “The Chinese people will never forget an old friend, and that’s an important message we want to send to the American people.” The often confrontational Global Times newspaper called for the two countries to cooperate.

One of the most notable features in the climate statement was that both countries would commit to “economy-wide” nationally determined contributions (NDCs) across all greenhouse gases, not just CO 2 . China has previously resisted the idea of specifying which parts of the economy would be covered by its climate pledges.

Li Shuo, the incoming director of the China Climate Hub at the Asia Policy Institute, said the language of “economy-wide” NDCs “implies a pretty stringent framework” that “will help enhance the transparency of China’s emissions”, a goal that the US has long pushed for.

The US and Chinese climate envoys, John Kerry and Xie Zhenhua, had met this month at the Sunnylands resort in California in an attempt to restart stalled cooperation. Experts agree that keeping the Paris goals in reach will require an enormous collective effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions this decade.

Xi arrived in the US for his first visit in six years on Tuesday and waved from atop a passenger staircase attached to his Air China plane before descending to meet US officials waiting on the tarmac, including the treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, and the US ambassador to China, Nicholas Burns.

He then got into his Chinese Hongqi, or “Red Flag”, limousine and departed the airport for the city, where demonstrations are expected both supporting and protesting against his visit.

He is due to meet Biden at an undisclosed location in San Francisco on Wednesday, a meeting that is expected to last at least four hours, and then attend the annual summit of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) forum.

Biden has said his goal in his talks with Xi will be to improve the relationship with China after a period of strained ties. He said he would seek to resume normal communications between the two superpowers, including military-to-military contacts. The White House national security spokesperson, John Kirby, told reporters that Biden and Xi would also talk about the Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza as well as US efforts to support Ukraine.

Speaking in the hours before Xi’s arrival, the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, addressed ministers of the 21-member Apec and stressed that the US believed in “a region where economies are free to choose their own path … where goods, ideas, people, flow lawfully and freely”.

Blinken did not mention China in his remarks, but his language echoed US rhetoric in recent years in which Washington has accused Beijing of bullying smaller countries in the Indo-Pacific and trying to undermine what the US and its allies call the existing “rules-based” order.

The US trade representative Katherine Tai, who with Blinken opened the Apec ministerial session, said the San Francisco meeting came at a time of “great uncertainty and challenges” for the region. She noted increasing geopolitical tensions, fragile supply chains and a worsening climate crisis.

Biden said the US did not want to decouple from China but wanted to change the economic relationship for the better. His administration has made a push to “de-risk” some critical US supply chains from China as the two countries’ economic and military competition has grown.

But it has been careful to assure countries in the region, including China, that the US does not seek complete economic separation, a notion that has fuelled concerns among Washington’s partners and allies of a superpower showdown that would upend the global economy.

Several hundred mostly pro-China demonstrators carrying Chinese flags gathered outside the Chinese delegation’s hotel before Xi’s arrival in the US. In recent weeks Chinese diaspora associations and the alumni networks of Chinese universities have been recruiting members to welcome Xi’s visit.

Larger protests, including by rights groups critical of Xi’s policies in Tibet, Hong Kong and toward Muslim Uyghurs, are expected to gather near the summit venue on Wednesday.

With Reuters and Agence France-Presse

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• Asia Pacific
• Climate crisis

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Xi Jinping’s Visit to the United States: All Eyes on China’s New Leader

Subscribe to the china bulletin, jonathan d. pollack jonathan d. pollack nonresident senior fellow - foreign policy , center for asia policy studies , john l. thornton china center.

February 10, 2012

The impending visit of China’s Vice President Xi Jinping to the United States has prompted understandable speculation about Beijing’s incoming top leader. Only a handful of senior US officials have met with Xi to this point, and his meetings with President Obama, members of the Cabinet, the Congressional leadership and various forays on the public stage will no doubt furnish information and insight into Xi’s personality, possibly yielding clues about what to expect from Xi when he assumes the top position in the Chinese Communist Party late this year.

Xi takes power at a very unsettled moment within China, and his lead Party rank does not imply outright political dominance. The maneuvering over senior leadership posts, to be announced at the 18th Party congress late this year, has clearly intensified, and will require balancing disparate interests atop the system. Only days prior to Xi’s departure for the United States, Wang Lijun, a recently demoted aide of one of China’s most openly ambitious politicians, Chongqing Party Secretary Bo Xilai, was detained by internal security personnel following Wang’s highly unusual visit to the U.S. consulate in Chengdu. If Chinese officials wished to impart the impression of a seamless leadership transition, recent events convey nothing of the sort.

Discontent at a popular level is even more apparent. There is acute restiveness within China, with citizens increasingly pushing back against bureaucratic and corporate actions that exploit and disenfranchise local populations. Widespread protests against a host of festering issues, including corruption, pervasive income inequality, and a lack of official accountability, continue to mount. Disaffection among educated elites is also increasingly evident, with intellectuals voicing growing unhappiness over the failings of senior policymakers to demonstrate courage and creativity in the face of growing challenges at home and abroad.

Anxieties within the senior leadership clearly extend to U.S.-China relations. Though American officials will no doubt convey their desire for cooperation with China’s incoming leader, the Obama administration has undertaken a much more forceful defense of U.S. interests across the Asia-Pacific region, openly cultivating closer ties with many of China’s neighbors. At the same time, the administration expects tangible evidence of Chinese responsiveness across a wide range of economic, political, and security issues. Vice President Xi will no doubt reiterate his recent calls for stability in bilateral ties, premised on the expectation that both countries have much to lose if relations fester or deteriorate. But stability that papers over major policy differences (most notably, on economic issues) will buy little, and may make matters worse.

All eyes will be focused on China’s leader during his U.S. visit. But even as Xi will want to put his best foot forward, he cannot overstep his authority. A Chinese domestic audience will be equally or even more attentive to Xi’s performance as his American interlocutors. For the present he remains the leader in waiting and his power is far from fully consolidated. He will soon inherit a daunting policy agenda, at a time of greatly rising expectations within China and parallel American expectations that China begin to assume an international role commensurate with its increasing economic, political, and military weight. Will he impart to U.S. officials his determination to address the “trust deficit” that continues to inhibit the full development of bilateral relations? This question is not only for Vice President Xi to address. But his demeanor and behavior during his visit will undoubtedly shape impressions among U.S. officials and a larger public audience about the road ahead in Sino-American relations.

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China warns U.S. of 'downward spiral' as Antony Blinken meets with Xi Jinping

HONG KONG — Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing on Friday as he wrapped up a three-day visit to China dominated by contentious issues and warnings from his hosts of another “downward spiral” in relations.

The two men met Friday afternoon local time at the Great Hall of the People, an ornate and cavernous building next to Tiananmen Square.

Xi noted that this year is the 45th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the United States and China, and said the two countries “should be partners rather than adversaries.”

“The world is big enough to accommodate the simultaneous development and prosperity of both China and the United States,” he said, according to a Chinese Foreign Ministry readout, adding that U.S.-China relations will stabilize once the U.S. takes “a positive and constructive view of China’s development.”

Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Blinken said the U.S. did not aim to hold back China’s development or decouple the world’s two largest economies.

“We want China’s economy to grow,” he said, but “the way China grows matters.”

“That means fostering a healthy economic relationship where American workers and firms are treated equally and fairly,” said Blinken, who cited what he called China’s unfair trade practices and the risk that Chinese industrial overcapacity in key industries such as solar panels and electric vehicles could result in U.S. and other markets being flooded with Chinese products.

The visit is Blinken’s second in less than a year as the two superpowers work to stabilize ties with renewed talks despite a growing list of geopolitical differences.

A primary goal of Blinken’s visit to China was to warn about its support for Russia’s war against Ukraine, which began weeks after Moscow and Beijing declared a “no limits” partnership in 2022. Though China does not appear to be supplying Russia with lethal assistance, Blinken said Friday that it was providing machine tools, microelectronics and other dual-use items that make it the “top supplier” of Russia’s defense industrial base.

“Russia would struggle to sustain its assault on Ukraine without China’s support,” he said.

Other issues on the agenda included Chinese economic and trade practices the U.S. views as unfair, Chinese aggression in the South China Sea , stability in the Taiwan Strait, North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs and the Israel-Hamas war.

Earlier Friday, Blinken met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse, where foreign dignitaries are often received.

“There’s no substitute, in our judgment, for face-to-face diplomacy in order to try and move forward, but also to make sure that we’re as clear as possible about the areas where we have differences, at the very least, to avoid misunderstandings, to avoid miscalculations,” Blinken told Wang before the meeting. 

Speaking through an interpreter before the meeting, Wang said the U.S.-China relationship “has gone through ups and downs and twists and turns.” 

He said the relationship was beginning to stabilize but that “negative factors” were increasing.

“China’s legitimate development rights have been unreasonably suppressed and our core interests are facing challenges,” Wang said, in an apparent reference to U.S. export controls and other measures that Beijing says are intended to limit its economic growth.

“Should China and the United States keep to the right direction of moving forward with stability or return to a downward spiral?” he said. “This is a major question before our two countries.”

Blinken later described his meeting with Wang, which lasted more than three hours, as “extensive and constructive.” 

According to a State Department readout, the two men discussed next steps on a range of commitments that Xi and President Joe Biden made at their summit in California in November, including advancing cooperation on counternarcotics, military-to-military communication, talks on artificial intelligence risks and safety, and facilitating people-to-people exchanges.

Blinken announced Friday that the U.S. and China would hold their first talks on artificial intelligence in the coming weeks.

The Biden-Xi summit, the first encounter between the two leaders in a year, was intended to stabilize U.S.-China relations that had reached their lowest point in decades amid disputes over trade, technology, the status of Taiwan and the downing of a suspected Chinese spy balloon over U.S. territory.

Though ties have improved since then, they are being tested by the strengthening of U.S. security alliances in the Asia-Pacific, U.S. concerns about Chinese goods flooding global markets, U.S. inquiries into China’s electric vehicle , shipbuilding and other industries, the possibility of increased U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods , and the passage this week of legislation that could result in a U.S. ban on the Chinese app TikTok .

The legislation, which Biden signed into law on Wednesday as Blinken was arriving in China, also includes $8 billion for security in Taiwan, a self-ruling island democracy that Beijing claims as its territory, and the broader Indo-Pacific, where the U.S. and China are competing for influence.

Blinken last visited China in June, when he also met with Xi. This trip also included a stop in Shanghai, where Blinken met with U.S. business leaders and visited the Shanghai campus of New York University .

Jennifer Jett is the Asia Digital Editor for NBC News, based in Hong Kong.

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Blinken warns China to address its support for Russia or ‘we will’

BEIJING — Chinese and U.S. leaders sought Friday to stabilize their contentious relationship, but Secretary of State Antony Blinken said as he left that there had been no promises on the top U.S. priority of cutting support for Russia’s defense industry.

Officials on both sides were frank about their differences as they sat for a marathon of meetings that amounted to nearly six hours between Blinken and China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi. But they also expressed optimism that their conversations were slowly building trust that was leading to improvements in a few areas, such as communications between their militaries and cracking down on chemicals that are used to make fentanyl.

Blinken, who also met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, said the two countries had agreed to hold a formal dialogue for the first time about artificial intelligence, to exchange views about a fast-developing technology that each side worries could give the other a formidable military advantage in any confrontation.

“Even as we seek to deepen cooperation where our interests align, the United States is very clear-eyed about the challenges posed by [China], and about our competing visions for the future,” Blinken told reporters after the meetings.

Asked whether Chinese leaders had agreed to restrict their support for Russia’s defense industry, which includes machine tools, drone parts, semiconductors and other items that are key to fueling the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine, the top U.S. diplomat gave no indication that there had been progress.

Russia would struggle to sustain its assault on Ukraine without China’s support, Blinken said. “If China does not address this problem, we will,” he added, in a possible reference to sanctions against Chinese businesses involved in the trade with Russia.

Relations have improved significantly since Blinken last visited 10 months ago, after a Chinese spy balloon’s transit across the United States set off an unusually broad national blowback to China’s espionage activity. Since then, conversations have become far more routine, enabling the world’s two biggest economies and superpower rivals to return to managing their tense but interdependent relationship.

“We hope the U.S. can look at China’s development in a positive light,” Xi said as he met Blinken. “This is a fundamental issue that must be addressed, just like the first button of a shirt that must be put right, in order for the China-U.S. relationship to truly stabilize, improve and move forward.”

Blinken’s meetings with Wang gave the two sides ample time to air their differences about a host of issues that include reviving military-to-military discussions and China’s frosty relationship with Taiwan.

But both sides said that holding conversations was a useful step in itself. Welcoming Blinken to the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing, Wang offered a cautious assessment of the discussions.

“Overall the China-U.S. relationship is beginning to stabilize,” he told Blinken. “This is welcomed by our two people.”

But, Wang said, “the negative factors in the relationship are still increasing and building, and the relationship is facing all kinds of disruptions. China’s reasonable development rights have been unreasonably suppressed and our core interests are facing challenges.”

He warned against “engaging in rivalry and confrontation and even sliding toward conflict.”

Beijing has also complained about U.S. efforts to cut off Chinese access to advanced semiconductors that would enable it to make progress on artificial intelligence that could have military applications.

The conversation with Xi was much shorter than that with his foreign minister, but it was a sign of the high degree of importance the two sides give their fraught dialogue. Xi and President Biden spoke earlier this month by phone and clashed on the subject of export controls, which the Biden administration says are necessary to keep U.S. technology from being used to undermine U.S. security, and Beijing which complains are simply an effort to restrict its economic rise.

Just how successful the U.S. strategy with China will be remains in question. With the United States seeking cooperation in some areas but pushing hard in others, Chinese leaders appear to have little appetite for making concessions elsewhere in the relationship. They complained Friday about a range of U.S. efforts to push back against what the Biden administration says are unfair trade practices such as subsidies for Chinese industries.

The Biden administration says that it is defending U.S. jobs and global rules of open trade. Chinese officials counter that Washington is simply trying to push back on its economic growth with measures such as potential hikes on tariffs on steel and aluminum.

For the relationship to move forward, the two sides “first need to answer a fundamental question of whether China and the United States are going to be partners or rivals,” Wang told Blinken, according to an official Chinese readout released after their meeting.

China and the United States have tangled in the South China Sea, where Beijing has made claims that go beyond its internationally recognized waters and pushed against Philippine and other fishing vessels.

Biden hosted the leaders of the Philippines and Japan in Washington earlier this month, a dialogue that Chinese leaders have complained is encircling them.

Blinken said Friday that Chinese actions in the South China Sea are “dangerous.”

Beijing may also be waiting out the election to make significant shifts in its policies, analysts said, mindful that both Biden and former president Donald Trump have campaigned on tough-on-China slogans but have somewhat different demands.

“There’s a U.S. election backdrop” in which both Democrats and Republicans gain from tough rhetoric on China, said Wang Huiyao, the president of the Beijing-based Center for China and Globalization.

“They want China to confront Russia, yeah, China can,” he said. “But the U.S. still wants to put China as strategic rival number one. China is not really incentivized.”

Although Europe appears to have endorsed the broad strokes of Washington’s vision, some European nations, notably Germany, still have a more conciliatory approach. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was in Beijing last week to meet top Chinese leaders, part of an effort that included bolstering trade ties.

China is concerned that the United States will continuously “raise the bar” on what it considers support for Russia’s war effort beyond lethal aid to areas Beijing considers “normal” trade, said Wu Xinbo, dean of the Institute of International Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai.

“If this time we bow to Blinken’s request to stop financial transactions, but the war continues and Ukraine keeps losing ground, then the U.S. will say ‘China, you should stop doing something else,’” Wu said. “It will be an endless process.”

The relationship with Russia was just one on a long list of issues the two sides sparred over.

The Biden administration, worried that fentanyl is the leading cause of death for Americans aged 18 to 45, has been pushing China to crack down on manufacturers of precursor chemicals. U.S. officials feel the issue is one where Beijing could offer some concessions at relatively little cost to itself, and might be a basis to build trust for greater cooperation in other areas of the relationship.

Blinken brought the State Department’s top official focused on narcotics, Todd Robinson, on the trip as a way to show how focused the administration is on the issue. But progress , though meaningful, has been slow, officials say.

Chinese officials have also been frustrated with the bill that just passed Congress that requires Chinese-controlled company ByteDance to sell TikTok , although Blinken said Friday that had not been a focus of conversations.

And the Biden administration has been pushing Beijing to get more involved in efforts to dial back the conflict in the Middle East, especially in recent weeks as tensions between Israel and Iran threatened to explode into a regional war. Biden administration officials have asked Beijing to use its influence with Iran to get that country to hold back from escalation.

“This is an area where China has relationships, it has the influence … to prevent the conflict from escalating,” Blinken told reporters.

But Blinken’s trip was not exclusively tense meetings with Chinese officials. On his way to the Beijing airport on Friday, he asked his motorcade to make a stop at the LiPi record store, where he bought two vinyl albums: one by the classic Chinese rock musician Dou Wei, and the other a copy of Taylor Swift’s “Midnights,” which he described as a successful American export.

Music is “the best connector, regardless of geography,” said Blinken, who has been known to pick up his guitar at State Department soirees.

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Blinken tells china it's in their interest to stop helping russia.

Steve Inskeep

Reena Advani

Taylor Haney

Majd Al-Waheidi

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks at a press conference at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing on Friday. Stefen Chow for NPR hide caption

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks at a press conference at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing on Friday.

BEIJING — Secretary of State Antony Blinken concluded his visit to China with a meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, urging more communication between the U.S. and China even as both men agreed both superpowers did not see eye to eye on a multitude of issues.

The secretary of state spoke with Morning Edition 's Steve Inskeep after meeting China's leader in Beijing.

The U.S. has alleged China is selling vital components to Russia's defense industry after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Blinken told Morning Edition that he warned Chinese counterparts helping Russia is against China's interests, because China wants better relations with European nations that see Russia as a threat.

"If China won't act, we will," Blinken said.

The top U.S. diplomat did not say how Chinese leaders replied in private. But in public, China's foreign ministry rejected the American's advice — saying that the U.S. is "hypocritical" to complain about China's trade with Russia while it aids Ukraine.

The exchange highlights the tense relations between the two nations — with their diplomats frequently being in the same room while not always on the same page.

The Secretary of State spoke with Morning Edition's Steve Inskeep after meeting Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Great Hall of the People, April 26, 2024, in Beijing. Stefen Chow for NPR hide caption

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity. To listen to the full interview between NPR's Steve Inskeep and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, use the audio player at the top of this page.

Steve Inskeep: I have followed China's public statements during this day of meetings that you've had. And the public statements are pretty pointed. China alleged the US has suppressed their economic development and said the U.S. attacked China's core interests, which is pretty harsh as diplomatic language goes. Was President Xi any different in private? Sec. Blinken : We had very direct, very candid, but also, in many ways, constructive conversations about two things. If you go back to the meeting between President Biden and President Xi at the end of last year, in San Francisco and Woodside, they agreed that it was very important, first of all, that we have these regular lines of communication. We had an obligation to manage this relationship responsibly, including dealing very directly with our differences, and also seeing if we could build areas of cooperation where it was in our mutual interest. Inskeep:

One thing you were focused on was trying to get China to stop giving aid to Russia's military as it invades Ukraine. And we can talk about China's attitude here because they've made a public statement. Their foreign ministry spokesman was asked today about ending aid to Russia and he said, look, we trade with Russia and you guys aid Ukraine. You're hypocrites. That sounds like a no, we're not stopping. Seemed to be what they were saying.

Sec. Blinken:

Here's the problem: What China's doing now is not providing weapons to Russia for use in Ukraine, as, for example, North Korea and Iran are. But it is the number one supplier of the critical components for Russia to rebuild its defense industrial base-- machine tools, microelectronics, optics and other things that are going right into a massive production of munitions, of weaponry, of tanks, of armored vehicles, which in turn are going into Ukraine. This is not only a problem for us, it's not only a problem for Ukraine. It's a problem for virtually everyone in Europe because they see this as helping to perpetuate the Russian aggression in Ukraine. They also see it as creating a growing threat to Europe's security.

One of the things that I shared with our Chinese colleagues is that at the very same time that they're trying to develop better relations with Europe, they can't be doing that while at the same time helping to fuel what is the biggest threat to Europe's security since the end of the Cold War. Now, we've already taken steps ourselves. We're prepared to do more if China is not prepared to act to curb this activity.

Inskeep : So you're trying to tell them it's in their interest to stop aiding Russia. But you also told reporters just a short time ago, "if China does not address this problem, we will." What power do you have?

Sec. Blinken: Well, as I said, you've already seen us take action against more than 100 Chinese entities with with sanctions, applying export controls. There are other measures that we're fully prepared to take. And as I said before, if China won't act, we will.

In October, the United States issued new regulations that denied Chinese firms access to the most advanced semiconductors and chips. How much has that one step altered the competition between these two countries?

Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with China's leader, Xi Jinping, at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Friday. Stefen Chow for NPR hide caption

Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with China's leader, Xi Jinping, at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Friday.

One of the things that we're very focused on is making sure that when it comes to the highest end technology, we're not in the business of providing or selling things that could be turned against us to undermine our own security. And so what we've done, as we've said, is to work to build a very high fence around a very small yard, because this is not about decoupling our economies. It's not about cutting off trade and investment with China. And as I mentioned a little while ago, we remain the number one market for Chinese products around the world, and there remains significant American investment in China. But when it comes to sensitive technology, we're going to be very, very sure that the most sensitive technology does not wind up where it could turn around and hurt us.

So while we're here in Beijing, we've been talking with a lot of people. And we met a university professor who said America's reputation has declined here, in part because of U.S. support for Israel in its war against Hamas. Then there was a headline in a Chinese paper today, "Chinese satellites detailed destruction to Gaza from the war." And it's been widely reported that China is playing up this conflict in the global south in many nations to undermine the United States. How can you respond to that?

Look, I can't—you know—focus on what they may be saying or doing inside of China. But what I can focus on is two things. One, of course, is what we're doing in the Middle East, both to try to bring this conflict to an end as quickly as possible in a way that allows Israel to ensure that October 7th never happens again, but also to do everything we can to protect the men, women, and children who are caught in this crossfire of Hamas' making.

When it comes to China, one of the things we actually discussed was the Middle East. And I've had, I think, six conversations with my Chinese counterparts since October 7th. I actually believe that China could play a constructive role in trying to make sure that conflict doesn't spread, that we don't see escalation because it has relationships. It has influence with critical countries in the region, including, for example, Iran. So what I'm focused on is trying to encourage China to use that influence in a productive way.

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Xi and Blinken Trade Small Nods Over a Large Gap

The U.S. secretary of state and the Chinese leader struck conciliatory notes in Beijing. But there was no budging on, or hiding, their governments’ core differences.

By Ana Swanson and Vivian Wang

The areas where the United States and China can work together seem to be shrinking fast, and the risks of confrontation are growing. But it was clear on Friday that both countries are trying to salvage what they can.

Preserving some semblance of cooperation — and the difficulty of doing so — was at the heart of a meeting between Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and China’s leader, Xi Jinping, in Beijing on Friday. It was the latest effort by the rivals to keep communications open even as disputes escalate over trade, national security and geopolitical frictions.

Officials in both countries said they had made progress on a few smaller, pragmatic fronts, including setting up the first U.S.-China talks on artificial intelligence in the coming weeks. They also said they would continue improving communications between their militaries and increase cultural exchanges.

But on fundamental strategic issues, each side held little hope of moving the other, and they appeared wary of the possibility of sliding into further conflict.

China has accused the United States of working to stifle its technological progress and encircle Chinese interests in the Pacific.

The Biden administration is deeply concerned that cheap Chinese exports are endangering U.S. jobs, and is threatening more sanctions on China if Beijing does not roll back its support of Russia in its war in Ukraine.

“Russia would struggle to sustain its assault on Ukraine without China’s support,” Mr. Blinken said at a pre-departure news conference on Friday. “I made clear that if China does not address this problem, we will.”

Mr. Blinken said he had pressed China to take further actions to stem the flow of materials used to make fentanyl, including prosecuting those who were selling chemicals and equipment.

He said the issue of TikTok, the Chinese-owned social media platform that faces a potential U.S. ban in nine to 12 months under a law passed this week, did not come up.

In a sign of how the countries’ relations — which hit perhaps their lowest point in decades last year — had stabilized in recent months, Chinese officials struck a more conciliatory tone on Friday than they had during Mr. Blinken’s last visit, in June .

“China is happy to see a confident, open, prosperous and thriving United States,” Mr. Xi told Mr. Blinken, according to a Chinese foreign ministry readout. “We hope the U.S. can also look at China’s development in a positive light.”

Mr. Blinken told Mr. Xi that he hoped to move forward on agreements on topics where Mr. Xi and President Biden had agreed to cooperate after they met near San Francisco in November.

“We are committed to maintaining and strengthening lines of communication to advance that agenda and again deal responsibly with our differences so we avoid any miscommunications, any misperceptions, any miscalculations,” Mr. Blinken said.

Still, more factors appear to be driving the two countries apart than keeping them together. Geopolitical disputes in Ukraine and the Middle East have presented new challenges. With an election approaching in the United States, the Biden administration is under pressure to offer more protections for American factories against Chinese imports.

Mr. Xi told Mr. Blinken that “the international situation is fluid and turbulent,” and that the United States and China should “honor words with actions, rather than say one thing but do the opposite,” according to the Chinese readout.

China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, who spent over five hours with Mr. Blinken on Friday, was more blunt, warning that negative factors in the relationship were “increasing and building.”

In recent weeks, U.S. officials have begun more urgently raising concerns about China’s economic assistance to Russia and have held out the possibility of further sanctions, including on the Chinese banks that have financed the trade.

Mr. Blinken said on Friday that the Chinese support for Russia was creating a threat not just to Ukraine, but to Europe more broadly, and that European leaders shared those concerns.

“All I can tell you is I was extremely clear about our concerns in some detail,” he said. “But we’ll have to see what actions follow from that.”

In a briefing with reporters in mid-April, a senior Biden administration official said that China had provided Russia with significant quantities of semiconductors, drones and industrial materials. That was helping to fill critical gaps in Russian supply chains that might otherwise cripple Russia’s war effort, causing the Russian military sector to expand more quickly than American officials had believed possible.

China has denied providing weapons to Russia, which Washington has said would be a red line. Otherwise, though, Chinese officials have shown little inclination to scale back their ties with Russia. On Thursday, soon after Mr. Blinken arrived in Beijing from Shanghai, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia announced that he would visit China in May, in probably his first overseas trip since securing re-election last month.

Asked about Mr. Putin’s announcement at a routine news briefing on Friday, a spokesman for the Chinese foreign ministry said he had no information to provide.

Trade frictions between the countries also continue to simmer, as American officials consider adding new tariffs on Chinese imports and restricting more exports of technology to China because of national security concerns.

Economic ties between the countries have long provided a source of strength for the relationship, a point Mr. Blinken reiterated while meeting with business executives in Shanghai on Thursday.

But with American businesses calling for more protections against China, and the prospect of a return of Donald J. Trump to the presidency, economic issues could turn more explosive.

To jump-start the economy, Mr. Xi and other Chinese leaders are stoking factory production and exports. But American leaders believe they must protect U.S. manufacturing, particularly the new factories making semiconductors, solar panels and car batteries in which the Biden administration is investing tens of billions of dollars this year.

At his news conference, Mr. Blinken said that China alone was producing more than 100 percent of global demand for products like solar panels and electric vehicles, and was responsible for one-third of global production but only one-tenth of global demand.

“This is a movie that we’ve seen before, and we know how it ends,” he said. “With American businesses shuttered and American jobs lost.”

Mr. Wang, the foreign minister, also saved some of his sharpest words for American trade policy. “The United States has adopted an endless stream of measures to suppress China’s economy, trade, science and technology,” he told Mr. Blinken during their meeting, according to the Chinese foreign ministry. “This is not fair competition but containment, and is not removing risks but creating risks.”

China knows that it probably has little room to sway the United States on trade, said Xie Tao, the dean of the School of International Relations and Diplomacy at Beijing Foreign Studies University. Instead, the Chinese government seems to be putting its focus on people-to-people exchanges, Professor Xie said.

Chinese media outlets have frequently raised Mr. Xi’s goal, announced after the summit near San Francisco last year, of inviting 50,000 young Americans to visit China. (Mr. Blinken said on Friday that he supported more Americans studying in China.)

“The Chinese government is really investing a lot of energy in shaping the future generation of Americans’ view of China,” Professor Xie said.

Li You contributed research.

Ana Swanson covers trade and international economics for The Times and is based in Washington. She has been a journalist for more than a decade. More about Ana Swanson

Vivian Wang is a China correspondent based in Beijing, where she writes about how the country’s global rise and ambitions are shaping the daily lives of its people. More about Vivian Wang

In Beijing, Blinken confronts China over 'powering' Russia's war

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China's Xi visits Vietnam in bid to counter US

Hanoi (AFP) – China and Vietnam pledged on Tuesday to deepen ties during President Xi Jinping's first visit in six years, as Beijing seeks to counter growing US influence with the communist nation.

Issued on: 12/12/2023 - 06:23 Modified: 12/12/2023 - 15:00

Xi met the leader of Vietnam's ruling Communist Party, Nguyen Phu Trong, on the first day of his trip, after Hanoi upgraded diplomatic ties with Washington when US President Joe Biden visited in September.

Biden's visit was part of US efforts around the world to contain China's rising economic power -- and to secure supplies of crucial materials needed for high-tech manufacturing.

China and Vietnam said in a joint statement on display at Trong's office they would "continue to deepen and increase bilateral relations".

They agreed to build a "community with a shared future" and said the visit was an "historic landmark in bilateral ties... contributing to peace and stability and development in the region and the world".

The two countries signed more than 30 agreements, including a pledge to develop rail links between Vietnam and China.

Vietnam has long pursued a "bamboo diplomacy" approach, striving to stay on good terms with both China and the United States.

It shares US concerns about Beijing's increasing assertiveness in the contested South China Sea, but it also has close economic ties with China.

Vietnam and China, both ruled by communist parties, already share a "comprehensive strategic partnership", Vietnam's highest diplomatic status.

Hanoi and Washington upgraded their relationship to the same level in September.

It was thought before the visit Xi could push for Vietnam to join his "Community of Common Destiny", a loosely defined phrase that refers to a vision of future cooperation on economic, security and political issues.

Vietnam expressed its support in the joint statement, although it did not use that specific term.

Xi said in an article published Tuesday in Vietnam's Nhan Dan newspaper that "Asia's future is in the hands of no one but Asians".

Overlapping claims

Chinese and Vietnamese flags lined the route from the airport into central Hanoi on Tuesday and dozens of well-wishers gathered outside the hotel where Xi is expected to stay.

Xi will hold talks on Wednesday with Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh and President Vo Van Thuong and lay a wreath at the mausoleum of revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh.

The trip comes with tensions between China and the Philippines running high in the South China Sea after a spate of incidents involving their vessels at flashpoint reefs.

The Philippines said it had summoned China's envoy on Monday and flagged the possibility of expelling him.

China claims almost the entire South China Sea and has ignored an international tribunal ruling that its assertions have no legal basis.

It deploys boats to patrol the busy waterway and has built artificial islands that it has militarised to reinforce its claims.

Vietnam, along with Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan, also have overlapping claims in the South China Sea.

During Biden's visit, Vietnam and the United States jointly warned against the "threat or use of force" in the contested waterway.

Vietnam was one of several ASEAN members upset by a new official Chinese map published in September showing sovereignty over almost the entire resource-rich waterway.

Analysts say that, like Biden in September, Xi may seek closer cooperation on rare earth minerals used in the manufacture of high-tech devices such as smartphones and electric car batteries.

Vietnamese state-controlled media reported last month that China Rare Earth Group Co. was looking for opportunities to work with Vietnam's mining giant Vinacomin.

The United States and Vietnam agreed in September to cooperate to help Hanoi quantify and develop its rare earth resources.

Their new partnership also included an agreement on semiconductors, as fears grow about US reliance on China for strategic resources.

US chip giant Nvidia wants to set up a base in Vietnam to develop its semiconductor industry, its CEO was quoted as saying by the Vietnamese government.

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