Insisting China 'play by the rules of the road', Biden-Xi virtual summit seeks to settle tense relationship

In a virtual summit scheduled for Monday, US President Joe Biden and China's Xi Jinping will talk about Taiwan and other flashpoints, but neither side seems receptive to a significant compromise.

After Biden's inauguration in January, the two leaders have spoken by phone twice, but since Xi refused to travel abroad due to the pandemic, an online video meeting was the only option short of an in-person summit.

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Jen Psaki, White House spokeswoman, said Biden was going into the summit, "from a position of strength." It is expected to last a couple of hours. This is after months of building alliances with other democracies to contain China.

In Psaki's words, the meeting is "an opportunity to set the terms of competition with China" and to insist Beijing "play by the rules of the road."

In the lead up to the meeting, most attention was focused on the dispute over Taiwan, a self-governing democracy claimed by China. Biden's advisers see the summit as a chance to prevent tensions from escalating.

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A US administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told reporters that Biden will "make clear that we want to build common guardrails to avoid miscalculation."

While the White House was seeking to temper expectations, an official said that the summit "is not a meeting where we expect deliverables to be coming out."

In his decades of public service, Biden has often stressed the importance of face-to-face meetings over phone conversations.

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Xi hasn't stepped out of the country in almost two years, and Biden has sharply criticized his absence from the recent G20 and COP26 climate summits.