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U.S. President Joe Biden on Tuesday denied a media report that Chinese President Xi Jinping had rejected his offer for a face-to-face summit to break the impasse in US-China relations.</p>
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<em>The Financial Times</em> cited five officials briefed on a 90-minute call between the two leaders last week as saying Xi did not take Biden up on the offer and instead insisted that Washington adopt a less critical stand towards Beijing.</p>
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&quot;It&#39;s not true,&quot; Biden said when asked by journalists if he was disappointed that Xi was not keen to meet him.</p>
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Biden&#39;s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said in a statement earlier on Tuesday that the report was &quot;not an accurate portrayal of the call. Period.&quot;</p>
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&quot;As we&rsquo;ve said, the Presidents discussed the importance of being able to have private discussions between the two leaders, and we&rsquo;re going to respect that,&quot; the statement added.</p>
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<em>Reuters</em> news agency also reported that a source who was among those briefed on the call confirmed The Financial Times report was accurate.</p>
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&quot;Xi apparently intimated that the tone and atmosphere of the relationship needed to be improved first,&quot; the source told Reuters.</p>
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The Financial Times quoted one of its sources as saying Biden had floated the summit as one of several possibilities for follow-on engagement with Xi, and he had not expected an immediate response.</p>
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It cited one U.S. official as saying that while Xi did not engage with the idea of a summit, the White House believed that was partly due to concerns about COVID-19.</p>
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The G20 summit in Italy in October has been talked about as a possible venue for a face-to-face meeting, but Xi has not left China since the outbreak of the pandemic early last year when he went to Indonesia.</p>
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The call between Biden and Xi was their first in seven months and they discussed the need to ensure that competition between the world&#39;s two largest economies does not veer into conflict.</p>
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A U.S. official briefing before the conversation called it a test of whether direct top-level engagement could end what had become a stalemate in ties, which are at the worst level in decades.</p>
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The White House said afterward it was intended to keep channels of communication open, but it has announced no plans for follow-on engagements.</p>
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Chinese state media said Xi had told Biden that U.S. policy on China imposed &quot;serious difficulties&quot; on relations, but added that both sides agreed to maintain frequent contact and ask working-level teams to step up communications.</p>
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Biden has followed his predecessor Donald Trump&rsquo;s tough line on China and continued with blacklisting Chinese companies. He has criticised the human rights abuse of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, and Beijing&rsquo;s crackdown on the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong. The US has also accused China of bullying its neighbours in the South China Sea.</p>
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