In the latest talks, Biden will pressure China’s Xi over North Korea’s ties with Russia

LIMA, Peru (AP) — President Joe Biden is expected to use his final meeting with the Chinese leader, Xi Jinpingto urge him to stop North Korea to further deepen its support for the Russian war against Ukraine.

Saturday discussions on the sidelines of the annual meeting Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit in Peru, it comes just over two months before Biden leaves office and makes way for the Republican president-elect Donald Trump. It will be Biden’s final check-in with Xi – someone who saw the Democrat as his most influential colleague on the world stage.

At the latest meeting, officials say Biden will look for Xi increase Chinese involvement to prevent an already dangerous moment with North Korea from escalating further.

Biden on Friday, together with South Korean President Yoon Seok Yul and Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, condemned the decision of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to send thousands of troops to help Moscow fend off Ukrainian forces that have seized territory in Russia’s Kursk border region.

Biden called it “dangerous and destabilizing cooperation.”

White House officials have also expressed frustration with Beijing, which controls the vast majority of North Korea’s trade, for not doing more to rein in Pyongyang.

Biden, Yoon and Ishiba spent most of their 50-minute discussion on the issue, agreeing that it “should not be in Beijing’s interest to have this destabilizing cooperation in the region,” according to a senior government official who spoke on condition of anonymity. discuss their private conversations.

The North Koreans have also supplied Russia with artillery and other munitions, according to U.S. and South Korean intelligence officials. And the US, Japan and South Korea have expressed concern about Pyongyang’s intensification cadence of ballistic missile tests.

Kim ordered test exercises ahead of this month’s U.S. election and claims progress in construction efforts possibility of attacking the American mainland.

Biden and Xi have much more to discuss than just North Korea China’s indirect support to Russiahuman rights issues, technology and Taiwan, the self-governing democracy that Beijing claims as its own.

There is also a lot of uncertainty on what lies ahead in the US-China relationship under Trump, who campaigned and promised to impose tariffs 60% rates about Chinese imports.

Many U.S. companies, including Nike and eyewear retailer Warby Parker, have already diversified their sourcing outside of China. Shoe brand Steve Madden says it plans to do so reduce imports from China next year by as much as 45%.

“When Xi meets Biden, part of his audience is not just the White House or the US government,” said Victor Cha, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “It’s about American CEOs and continued American investment, or about efforts to renew American investment in China and remove the perception that there is a hostile business environment in China.”

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Biden administration officials will advise the Trump team that managing fierce competition with Beijing will likely be the most important foreign policy challenge they will face are confronted.

Government officials are concerned that tensions between China and Taiwan could spiral into all-out war if there is a miscalculation on both sides, with catastrophic consequences for the world.

Sullivan said the Trump administration will have to deal with the Chinese military’s frequent harassment of its regional neighbors.

Skirmishes between the Philippine and Chinese coast guards in the disputed South China Sea have become a persistent problem. Chinese coast guard ships also regularly approach disputed Japanese-controlled islands in the East China Sea near Taiwan.

Ishiba met with Xi on Friday. Afterwards, the Japanese prime minister said he told Xi he was “extremely concerned about the situation in the East China Sea and the escalating activity of the People’s Liberation Army.”

The White House worked for months to arrange Saturday’s meeting between Xi and Biden, something the Democrat was eager to do before leaving office in January.

Sullivan traveled to Beijing in late August to meet his Chinese counterpart sat down with Xi. Beijing agreed to the meeting earlier this week.

It’s a big moment for Biden, after more than fifty years in politics. He considered his relationship with Xi to be one of the most consequential on the international stage and put a lot of effort into cultivating that relationship.

Biden and Xi first met during trips to the US and China when both were vice presidents, interactions that both say left a lasting impression.

But the past four years have seen a steady stream of difficult moments.

The FBI this week offered new details of a federal investigation inside Chinese government attempts to hack US telecommunications networks. The initial findings have a “broad and significant” cyber espionage campaign aimed at stealing information from Americans who work in government and politics.

U.S. intelligence officials have also assessed China has increased sales to Russia enormously of machine tools, microelectronics and other technology that Moscow uses to produce missiles, tanks, aircraft and other weapons for use in its war against Ukraine.

And tensions flared last year after Biden ordered the shooting down of a Chinese spy balloon flying over the United States.

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Associated Press writer Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo contributed.