War & peace

President Joe Biden, meeting his top military advisers, said that the United States does not seek conflict with China and that Chinese President Xi Jinping knows this.Biden said the United States would continue to lead on a number of issues, from Russia’s aggression in Ukraine to climate change to the Indo-Pacific region. ‘We do not seek conflict with them, he said of the Chinese.John Kirby, a spokesman for Biden’s National Security Council, said the US would “keep the lines of communication open, and that includes at the leader level.” He said teams are still working through a possible meeting when world leaders gather at a Group of 20 meeting in Bali next month, in what would be Biden’s first sitdown as president with Xi.Xi filled China’s most powerful bodies with close allies while securing a precedent-breaking third term, shifting away from the collective leadership model that underpinned the nation’s rise to become the world’s second-biggest economy. US officials expected Xi to double down on isolationist policies and anticipated him to emerge from the party gathering emboldened and more aggressive toward the US and other nations, people familiar with the Biden administration’s thinking said.