Biden said he was going into the discussions with Xi “stronger”, after his Democratic Party’s unexpected success in midterm elections they had been forecast to lose heavily. But the summit comes with Beijing and Washington’s rivalry intensifying as a more powerful and assertive China tries to disrupt the US-led international order. The world’s two largest economies are at loggerheads on everything from trade to human rights in China’s Xinjiang region and the status of the self-ruled island of Taiwan, and Biden said he expected “straightforward discussions” with Xi.
