Washington: U.S. President Joe Biden denied on Tuesday a media report that his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, last week turned down a suggestion from Biden for a face-to-face meeting.
The Financial Times cited multiple people briefed on a 90-minute call between the 2 leaders last week as saying Xi didn’t take Biden abreast of the offer and instead insisted that Washington adopt a less strident tone toward Beijing.

“It’s not true,” Biden said when asked by reporters if he was disappointed that Xi didn’t want to satisfy with him.

Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said during a statement earlier on Tuesday that the report was “not an accurate portrayal of the decision . Period.”

A source who was among those briefed on the decision confirmed the report was accurate.

“Xi apparently intimated that the tone and atmosphere of the connection needed to be improved first,” the source told Reuters.

China’s embassy in Washington didn’t immediately respond when asked to comment.

The Financial Times quoted one among its sources as saying Biden had floated the summit together of several possibilities for follow-on engagement with Xi, and he had not expected an instantaneous response.

It cited one U.S. official as saying that while Xi didn’t engage with the thought of a summit, the White House believed that was partly thanks to concerns about COVID-19.

The G20 summit in Italy in October has been talked about as a possible venue for a face-to-face meeting, but Xi has not left China since the outbreak of the pandemic early last year.

In his statement, Sullivan added: “As we’ve said, the Presidents discussed the importance of having the ability to possess private discussions between the 2 leaders, and we’re getting to respect that.”

The call between Biden and Xi was their first in seven months and that they discussed the necessity to make sure that competition between the world’s two largest economies doesn’t veer into conflict.

A U.S. official briefing before the conversation called it a test of whether direct top-level engagement could end what had become a stalemate in ties, which are at the worst level in decades.

The White House said afterward it had been intended to stay channels of communication open, but it’s announced no plans for follow-on engagement
Chinese state media said Xi had told Biden that U.S. policy on China imposed “serious difficulties” on relations, but added that each side agreed to take care of frequent contact and ask working-level teams to intensify communications.