Biden, Xi discuss North Korean issue in virtual summit: White House

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un / AP-Yonhap

U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping exchanged their views on various regional issues, including North Korea, in their first bilateral summit Monday, the White House said.

"The two leaders also exchanged views on key regional challenges, including DPRK, Afghanistan, and Iran," the White House said in a press release, referring to North Korea by its official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

A U.S. official said the summit largely focused on ways to manage the growing competition between the two countries.

"The meeting itself was really about, you know, the two leaders discussing ways to manage the competition between the United States and China responsibly and ways to establish guardrails, you know, for that competition," the senior administration official said in a telephonic press briefing Tuesday.

Still, the Biden-Xi summit came amid U.S. efforts to bring North Korea back to the dialogue table.

U.S. officials have insisted China could and should do more, including sanctions implementation, to help restart denuclearization negotiations with North Korea.

"China does have influence in Pyongyang, and we all, the international community, would like to see them use that influence in a constructive way to put some bite into the sanctions that are already in place under the U.N. Security Council," Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said earlier.

Pyongyang has stayed away from denuclearization talks since 2019. It also remains unresponsive to outreach from the Biden administration.

Monday's summit, held virtually, marked the first bilateral meeting between Biden and Xi since the U.S. leader took office in January. (Yonhap)