Biden team works on ‘Xi meeting’ as Chinese leader tightens grip

President Joe Biden’s advisers are working on setting up a meeting with Xi Jinping and maintaining a dialogue after the Chinese president emerged from the Communist Party congress last week with a tighter grip on the country, a White House spokesman said.

John Kirby, a spokesman for Biden’s National Security Council, said the US would have no official comment on China’s leadership process, but would “keep the lines of communication open, and that includes at the leader level.”

“You’ve heard the President talk about the potential for a meeting with President Xi at the G-20. The teams are still sort of working that through,” Kirby said.

Xi, the Chinese president, filled China’s most powerful bodies with close allies while securing a precedent-breaking third term, shifting away from the collective leadership model that underpinned the nation’s rise to become the world’s second-biggest economy.

The Chinese leader, 69, installed six trusted associates alongside him on the Politburo’s supreme Standing Committee on Sunday, putting his former chief of staff, Li Qiang, in line to become the country’s premier. Those associated with other camps failed to secure any positions of power, with Vice Premier Hu Chunhua kept off the broader 24-member Politburo altogether.

The move effectively puts a group of Xi’s loyal aides in key positions throughout the government, tearing down divisions between party and state instituted following Mao Zedong’s chaotic rule that ended with his death in 1976.

Biden is expected to meet Xi on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit next month, though a date hasn’t been set and it’s not clear what, if anything, the two sides want to achieve in their first face-to-face meeting since Biden took office.

US officials expected Xi to double down on isolationist policies and anticipated him to emerge from the party gathering emboldened and more aggressive toward the US and other nations, people familiar with the Biden administration’s thinking said.

Kirby said the US was focused on “responsibly managing our competition with China.” A visit by US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan in August led to a further deterioration of relations. Beijing responded with a series of military drills and missile launches over the island, which the US and its allies condemned. “It’s still unfortunate that the Chinese have shut down those working level, bilateral contacts,” Kirby said.

“For our part, we continue to believe there’s no reason for there to be a move on Taiwan or any conflict whatsoever because nothing has changed about our approach,” he added.  The developments in Beijing are the latest illustration of a growing emphasis on ideology over pragmatism in Chinese policy-making, with fewer voices at the top to question Xi’s policies of Covid Zero, tighter control over the private sector and a more assertive foreign policy. They also affirmed China’s shift in a more conservative direction, without a single woman on the Politburo for the first time in a quarter century.

—Bloomberg