US President Joe Biden said yesterday Friday that he always expects to meet with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, who is expected in November in the US for the Asia-Pacific (APEC) summit.

“I hope to continue the conversation we had in Bali in the fall. That’s what I’m discounting,” Mr. Biden said when asked during a news conference after a trilateral summit with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean President Yun Seok-gil at Camp David, not far from Washington.

He was referring to his meeting with Mr Xi in November 2022 in Bali, Indonesia, during a G20 summit.

He made the statement even as Washington, Tokyo and Seoul condemned Beijing’s “dangerous and aggressive behavior” at the summit.

And although last week he described China as a “ticking time bomb in many ways”, referring in particular to the Asian giant’s unemployment rate and aging population.

Speaking during a visit to Utah, he added that this was cause for concern, as “when bad people have problems, they do bad things.”

However, he assured once again that he wants Washington to have a “reasonable relationship” with Beijing. “I don’t want anything bad to happen to China, but I’m watching,” he added.

In late June, the US president caused irritation in Beijing when he labeled his counterpart Xi Jinping a “dictator”. This comment was taken as a “provocation” by Chinese diplomacy.

Mr. Biden’s administration has recently resumed high-level contacts with China, with a series of visits by top officials to Beijing, starting with that of the head of American diplomacy, Anthony Blinken.

The specific trip was intended for the two sides to turn the page on the most recent episode that raised the tension between them to the skies, the case of the Chinese hot air balloon that the US called “spy” and sent an F-22 fighter to shoot it down in February.