On Thursday, Joko Widodo, the Indonesian President, said that Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping planned to attend the G-20 conference that will be held in November this year. The announcement sets up a high-profile confrontation with United States President Joe Biden. In an interview, Widodo told Bloomberg that he had received assurances from the leaders of Russia and China that they would attend the summit scheduled on the Indonesian island of Bail.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping will attend the G-20 November summit in Bali, according to Andi Widjajanto, a longtime adviser to the Indonesian president’s Friday statement. #G20summit #NovemberSummit #VladimirPutin #XiJinping #Russia #China pic.twitter.com/HtlAEKzHYM

— Live News Now (@LiveNewsNow6) August 20, 2022

Moreover, the presence of both leaders will increase the stakes for the G-20 conference, the first since the Russian attack on Ukraine, and the upsurge of the tensions around the Taiwan matter. However, both leaders (Xi and Putin) did not attend the 2021 G-20 summit in Rome. The Chinese leader has only started to travel outside China as the Coronavirus pandemic declines. The White House hasn’t officially announced the U.S president’s travel to Asia for the conference, but officials say he is likely to attend.

For the last some weeks, China and U.S. officials have been working quietly to arrange the first in-person meeting between Xi and Biden since the U.S. president took office, with an eye toward this year’s string of Asian summits in November:

• The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference in Thailand
• The G-20 conference in Bali
• A meeting of Southeast Asian leaders in Cambodia

Nancy Pelosi’s Visit to Taiwan

In recent weeks, stress between the United States and China has worsened following United States House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan. On the other hand, Beijing has sped up weapons tests and military exercises and closed specific communication channels with the U.S. During the last phone call, the presidents of China and the U.S. settled to work toward a face-to-face meeting. President Biden advocates regular dialogs with his foreign counterparts, even when tensions are high.

The U.S. president and his advisers have been in conversations for the last some months about how to approach the G-20 summit should the Russian leader attend, and it was a topic of discussion among partner world leaders at the G-7 meeting held in Germany and at a NATO March meeting in Brussels. Specifically, at the G-7 summit, leaders discussed crucial ways to explain a united front against Moscow at the November meeting.

Furthermore, the United States President said that Moscow should be barred from the G-20 summit, and his government’s senior members have walked out of G-20 events where Russian officials were present. However, boycotting the G-20 was not given serious concern since the U.S. president and his administration didn’t want to seem to be conceding the table to the Russian leader.

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