August 28, 2024

President Joe Biden will speak with Chinese leader Xi Jinping “in the coming weeks,” the White House said Wednesday, likely the final one-on-one contact between the two leaders before November’s U.S. presidential election.

Plans for the call were hammered out in Beijing between Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and national security adviser Jake Sullivan, who is in China for three days of planned meetings. The upcoming call will be the two leaders’ second phone communication since their in–person meeting in California in November. Beijing confirmed plans for the call in a Foreign Ministry statement that said “a new round of interaction” between the two leaders will occur “in the near future.”

Sullivan and Wang also discussed the need for “concrete steps to tackle the climate crisis” during the upcoming visit to Beijing by John Podesta, Biden’s senior adviser for international climate policy. Climate experts say that U.S.-China alignment on the issue of climate finance — financial support for developing countries grappling with the negative impacts of climate change — is essential to the success of the United Nations COP29 conference in November.

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