US holds highest-level talks with China in months, with Biden-Li meeting at G20

US President Joe Biden said on Sunday he held his highest-level direct talks with the Chinese leadership in months and said the country’s economic wobbles would not lead it to invade Taiwan.

“My team, my staff still meets with President Xi’s people and his cabinet,” Biden told reporters. “I met with his number two person in India today.”

Chinese Premier Li Qiang attended the annual G20 summit in New Delhi. In March, he took office in the country’s number two post.

The two men spoke about stability and the Southern Hemisphere, Biden said.

He added that the Chinese economy has struggled due to a lack of international growth, but Biden did not see it leading the country to taking steps to change the status quo of the self-ruled island of Taiwan, which Beijing says is a part of mainland China.

“I don’t think this is going to cause China to invade Taiwan,” Biden said. “As a matter of fact, the opposite, probably doesn’t have the same capacity that it had before.”

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Chinese President Xi Jinping to skip G20 summit in New Delhi, India

Chinese President Xi Jinping to skip G20 summit in New Delhi, India

Biden also insisted that he does not want to “contain” China, as Washington and Beijing face deepening divisions on trade, security and rights.

Biden said he and Li discussed “stability” during the meeting, which was not announced by the White House.

The president revealed his encounter with Li in Hanoi, where earlier in the day he agreed a deal to deepen ties with Vietnam as Washington looks to bolster its network of allies around Asia and the Pacific in the face of Beijing’s rising influence.

Washington and Beijing are at loggerheads on a range of global issues, and Biden accused China of seeking to bend the international order to its will.

“One of the things that is going on now is China is beginning to change some of the rules of the game, in terms of trade and other issues,” Biden told a press conference.

Washington has invested heavily in building alliances as part of its Indo-Pacific strategy, including the Quad security dialogue with India, Australia and Japan, and the Aukus pact with Britain and Australia.

But Biden insisted the United States is not seeking to box China in, but rather to establish clear ground rules for relations.

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“I don’t want to contain China. I just want to make sure we have a relationship with China that is on the up and up, squared away, everybody knows what it’s all about,” he said.

Chinese President Xi Jinping skipped the G20 as Beijing and Delhi tussle over territorial and other issues.

Russian President Vladmir Putin was not at the summit either.

Reporting by Agence France-Presse, Reuters