For the first time in nearly seven months, Chinese President Xi Jinping and his US counterpart Joe Biden have called each other. Biden said he wanted to ensure that the “competition” between the two superpowers does not become a “conflict”.
During the conversation, Biden’s message was that the United States wants to make sure “that we don’t get into a situation where we get into an unintended conflict in the future,” a senior administration official told reporters in the White House on Thursday.
Chinese state media reports that Xi allegedly told Biden that US policies had put China in “serious trouble”, possibly referring to the trade war between the two countries. Restoring ties is “critical to the fate of the world,” the Chinese president said.
Relations between Washington and Beijing have cooled recently, and Biden, who took office in January, has spoken with Xi by phone only once before.