Biden, Xi meet in Peru for final talks as US prepares for Trump presidency

WASHINGTON

Outgoing US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping met Saturday in the Peruvian capital of Lima as Washington braces for the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump.

The meeting took place on the margins of the Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, or APEC, which brought together leaders from 21 nations this week.

It is the third in-person meeting between the two leaders since Biden took office in January 2020, and will be their final meeting for the US president.

The White House said this week that Biden, throughout his tenure, has worked to effectively and responsibly manage competition between the US and China.

During the meeting, Xi told Biden that China’s goal of a "stable, healthy and sustainable China-US relationship remains unchanged."

"China is ready to work with the new US administration to maintain communication, expand cooperation and manage differences, so as to strive for a steady transition of the China-US relationship for the benefit of the two peoples," he said.

Biden, for his part, said the two countries have experienced "ups and downs" in their relationship and added that they also engaged in fruitful dialogues and cooperation.

According to Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying, the Chinese leader, in his opening remarks, said relations between the two countries "have gone through ups and downs" in the past four years.

"But the two sides have also been engaged in fruitful dialogue and cooperation and their relationship has remained stable on the whole," Hua wrote on X.

The two leaders previously met in the Indonesian city of Bali in 2022 at the G20 summit and in the US state of California near San Francisco in 2023 on the margins of an APEC summit.

Biden will later head to Brazil for the G20 meeting and tour of the Amazon rainforest.

Trump, who won the Nov. 5 US presidential election, will be inaugurated Jan. 20, 2025.