Biden intends to speak with Xi to defuse tensions over balloon

Bloomberg

President Joe Biden expects to speak with Xi Jinping about the Chinese balloon shot down by the US earlier this month, signalling a desire to end a dispute that has highlighted the fragility of relations between the world’s biggest economies.
Biden disclosed plans for the call as part of his most extensive remarks yet about the balloon saga, which led the US to destroy three other still-unidentified objects. He pledged to “responsibly manage” competition with China “so that it doesn’t veer into conflict” — echoing a sentiment expressed when both leaders pledged to improve ties during a November meeting.
“I expect to be speaking with President Xi, and I hope we have a — we are going to get to the bottom of this,” Biden said in remarks at the White House. “But I make no apologies for taking down that balloon.”
Biden, who plans to visit Europe ahead of the one-year mark of the Russian invasion, didn’t specify when he intended to speak with Xi.
Since taking office two years ago, Biden has repeatedly leveraged his personal relationship with Xi — forged when both leaders served as vice president — to keep disputes from escalating.
Biden and Xi also spoke after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and days before then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August. Their first face-to-face meeting in November on the Indonesian resort island of Bali
appeared to represent a breakthrough, coming as part of a wider push by Xi to ease diplomatic disputes and focus on
rebuilding his Covid-battered economy.
“Without clear directions from the top, it is difficult for the lower levels to properly manage the incident,” said Vivian Zhan, an associate professor of Chinese politics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
“Biden’s gesture suggests that the tension has escalated to the degree that it hurts the US interest as much as it does China, and needs to be contained.”
In another sign that both sides are eager to turn the page, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is said to be weighing a meeting with China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference beginning. The balloon’s transit over the US and Canada prompted Blinken to cancel a trip to Beijing that had been planned in the wake of the earlier Biden-Xi meeting.
While China initially expressed regret over what it said was the balloon’s accidental passage over US territory, it has denied that the craft was intended for spying and denounced the decision to shoot it down as an “overreaction.”
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said at a regular press briefing in Beijing that he had no information to offer on plans for any discussions between the two leaders.
Beijing imposed fines and sanctions against two US defense companies, Lockheed Martin Corp and a subsidiary of Raytheon Technologies Corp, due to their participation in arms sales to Taiwan, the Chinese Commerce Ministry said.
A largely symbolic gesture against companies with little exposure to China, it nonetheless showed Beijing’s growing impatience with the US.
Meanwhile, Michael Chase, the US’s deputy assistant secretary of defense for China, will go to Taiwan in the coming days, the
Financial Times reported. Biden has faced bipartisan pressure in Congress to provide more information about the balloon, which was downed by a US fighter jet off the South Carolina coast.