China, U.S. Look to a Biden-Xi Summit While Wrestling Tensions

WASHINGTON—China’s foreign minister opened meetings with the Biden administration national security team to brighten the way for a summit between their leaders and keep in check the gamut of issues driving the countries’ tensions.

On the lengthy agenda for the meetings that began Thursday are two hot spots. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who held talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, said he wants to enlist Beijing’s help in keeping the Israel-Hamas war from widening. China’s harassment of Philippine ships trying to resupply a South China Sea outpost also drew a sharp warning from President Biden this week not to attack a U.S. ally.

Despite those differences, a key thing to watch Friday is whether Wang gets to see Biden. Both governments have been trying to stabilize their contentious relations for months. Early in that effort, Blinken got an audience with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing in June in a fence-mending signal. Biden seeing Wang would reciprocate the gesture, and, officials and China specialists said, would be another marker that both sides are on track for a summit next month.

“We have disagreements; we have differences. At the same time, we also share important common interests and we face challenges that we need to respond to together. Therefore, China and the United States need to have dialogue,” Wang said at the start of Thursday’s talks with Blinken.

The Biden-Xi summit is almost certain to take place alongside a gathering of Asia-Pacific leaders in San Francisco, some U.S. officials said. If it occurs, the meeting would be their first face-to-face talks in a year, repairing what U.S. and Chinese officials see as an indispensable channel to manage their countries’ fractious global rivalry and try to forge cooperation amid deep distrust.

U.S. officials privately say that Wang’s trip is intended to set up a Biden-Xi summit but that they don’t expect Beijing to confirm Xi’s participation until shortly before the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum meeting in mid-November. China’s Foreign Ministry has also sidestepped questions on whether Xi will attend the APEC forum and whether Wang will meet Biden.

In media briefings about Wang’s visit, however, U.S. officials have deflected questions about summit preparations and instead focused on a lengthy list of international hot spots and two-way disagreements—the Middle East, Taiwan, the Ukraine war, North Korea, China’s involvement in the production of the opioid fentanyl and its assertive behavior in the East and South China Seas.

On most of those issues, Washington and Beijing have struggled to find common ground. On Thursday, the Pentagon released video footage of what it said was a Chinese J-11 jet fighter coming within 10 feet of a B-52 bomber in international airspace above the South China Sea—the latest instance of what the U.S. said is a concerted People’s Liberation Army strategy to conduct dangerous intercepts to try to scare off American forces.

In the Israel-Hamas war, Beijing, while calling for a cease-fire, has presented itself as an alternative to Washington, refusing to condemn Hamas and giving more full-throated support for a Palestinian state. China vetoed a U.S.-sponsored resolution Wednesday that called for a humanitarian pause in fighting but recognized Israel’s right to self-defense at the U.N. Security Council this week; China called the text “unbalanced.”

A summit, while not resolving these disagreements, would show commitment to managing tensions and restraining them from devolving into head-to-head conflict, some officials and China specialists said.

At their last meeting in Bali last year, Biden and Xi agreed to try to restore regular high-level communications that had dwindled during the Covid pandemic and been all but stopped by Beijing in anger over U.S. support for Taiwan. Instead of rebuilding relations, the two governments redoubled recriminations, first over a Chinese balloon the U.S. said was spying over North America before shooting it down and then over China’s increasingly close relationship with Russia in the Ukraine war.

Aside from a reboot, a summit now gives the Biden administration a chance to persuade Beijing to restore talks between the militaries and reduce the risk of accidents between naval and air forces operating near to each other, officials said. Another ask for the administration, they said, is eliciting Beijing’s help in cutting off supplies of chemicals made in China to Mexican drug cartels, which use them to make fentanyl.

With the Chinese economy struggling with lower growth and falling investment from overseas, a summit would give Xi an opportunity to show that China wants to put tensions aside, potentially boosting business confidence. Xi is also likely to seek assurances from Biden on Taiwan, long the central flashpoint in ties, China specialists said. Taiwan holds presidential elections in January, and Beijing wants Washington to stay neutral and not help the ruling party’s candidate, whom China distrusts.

For Beijing, the optics of U.S. summits are important, with a chance for a Chinese leader to be seen as a respected peer of the American president. Both sides have been negotiating over where to hold the meeting, scouting out venues other than where APEC leaders will meet.

Nancy A. Youssef contributed to this article.

Write to Charles Hutzler at charles.hutzler@wsj.com