APEC Summit: US President Joe Biden says he made "real progress" with China's Xi Jinping

The meeting, which lasted over four hours, also produced an agreement to increase flights between the two countries next year, according to Xinhua news agency.

The carefully choreographed meeting went multiple sessions - including a working lunch featuring herb ricotta ravioli, heritage chicken, and almond meringue cake - with the pair and their top aides huddling in a secluded century-old Georgian manor south of San Francisco.

Leaders from APEC members will also be using the confab in San Francisco — the largest international event in the city since the United Nations charter was signed in 1945 — for a raft of bilateral and multilateral meetings.

Top chief executive officers are also slated to attend, including Elon Musk, Sundar Pichai and Jane Fraser. Xi is expected to address a dinner of CEOs on Wednesday.

The US is the 2023 rotating host for events tied to the 21-member APEC group, which originated in a vision laid out by Australia in the late 1980s. The US kicked off annual APEC summits in 1993, and — in an era of enthusiasm for globalization — championed its use for trade-barrier reductions.

After meeting with Xi, Biden said he made “real progress.”

“There are critical global challenges that demand our joint leadership. And today, we made real progress,” Biden said in a post on X, the platform formally known as Twitter.

“I value the conversation I had today with President Xi because I think it’s paramount that we understand each other clearly, leader to leader,” Biden said.

The China-US relationship is “the most important bilateral relationship in the world,” Xi told Biden in an opening speech.

“For two large countries like China and the United States, turning their back on each other is not an option,” Xi said. “It is unrealistic for one side to remodel the other and conflict and confrontation has unbearable consequences for both sides.”

Biden acknowledged the difficult conversations ahead.

“I’ve always found our discussions straightforward and frank,” he said in his opening remarks. “We haven’t always agreed, which was not surprised anyone, but our meetings have always been candid straightforward and useful.”