Joe Biden and Xi Jinping speak after a rare trip by the US security adviser to China

BEIJING – US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping will speak by phone in the coming weeks. The White House said this on Wednesday.

The announcement came during US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan’s trip to Beijing this week to meet with Wang Yi, China’s top diplomat.

Both sides said their military leaders would also make a call in the near future.

Chin added that plans are underway for the second round of US-China talks on artificial intelligence. The White House noted that John Podesta, the president’s senior adviser on international climate policy, would travel to China soon, without specifying a date.

In the official readouts of Sullivan’s trip, the two countries maintained their positions on technical restrictions, Taiwan, the South China Sea and Ukraine.

Biden will not run for re-election in November after this summer, handing the nomination to his vice president, Kamala Harris. The White House statement did not name the presidents but mentioned plans for a “leader-level call.”

The Statement from the Chinese side used typical language of “two heads of state” and said both sides were discussing “a new round of interaction,” according to a CNBC translation from Chinese.

Biden and Xi held a nearly two-hour phone call in early April, after the two leaders met on the sidelines of a summit in Woodside, California, in November 2023.

High-level communication between the world’s two largest economies has not been easy in recent years due to increased tensions and Covid-19 restrictions.

Then-US Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan in August 2022 and a high-profile ‘balloon incident’ in February 2023 had further strained their relationship, causing a number of planned talks to be put on hold.

Sullivan arrived in Beijing on Tuesday, concluded two days of meetings with Wang on Wednesday and will leave on Thursday. Despite that, this is his first trip to China as national security advisor multiple encounters with Wang in recent years.

The last official trip to China by a US president’s national security adviser was in 2016, when Susan Rice traveled to Beijing under the Obama administration.

While the outcome of November’s presidential election remains unclear, tough action against Beijing is a rare issue on which both U.S. political parties agree.

Harris’ current national security adviser, Phil Gordon, said this in a speech in May Council on Foreign Relations event that the “China challenge” is far greater than that of Taiwan, and requires ensuring that Beijing “does not have the advanced technology, intelligence and military capabilities that could challenge us.”