Biden aims for high-stakes meeting with Xi Jinping with Putin summit in the rearview

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(CNN)President Joe Biden's closely watched summit last week with his Russian counterpart affirmed his belief that nothing can replicate a face-to-face with a tough adversary. Now, he and his aides are looking ahead to a higher-stakes encounter: a meeting with China's Xi Jinping.

White House officials say the two could meet in the coming months, possibly on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in Rome at the end of October, which both are expected to attend. They've also left open the possibility of a separate meeting, if China agrees, or simply another telephone call.

"It's now just a question of when and how," Biden's national security adviser Jake Sullivan said last week of an engagement between the US and Chinese leaders.

Already, China has taken an interest in Biden's approach. In the days since Biden sat down with Vladimir Putin in Geneva, Russia updated China on what happened inside the talks. When Russia's ambassador to the US returned to Washington this week as part of an agreement struck during the presidents' meeting, one of his first stops was debriefing his Chinese counterpart on the Biden-Putin summit.


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