Politico

President Joe Biden’s son Hunter is among the dozens of guests on the list to attend the president’s state dinner with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday evening.

It’s the first time the president will attend an official event with his son since Hunter Bidenreached a plea deal to resolve a five-year federal investigation into his failure to pay about $1 million in federal taxes and his purchase of a handgun in 2018.

The president has so far refrained from commenting widely on his son’s legal woes, telling reporters, “I’m very proud of my son.”

But things could get awkward at Thursday’s dinner, as the president’s son comes up against some of his foremost critics. The list of expected attendees also includes House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who has lambasted the results of the Justice Department inquiry and has helped amplify Republican calls for further investigation into Hunter Biden and the Biden family.

“It continues to show the two-tier system in America.” McCarthy said of the plea deal. “If you are the president’s leading political opponent, the DOJ tries to literally put you in jail and give you prison time. But if you are the president’s son, you get a sweetheart deal.”

Making for even more potential discomfort, Attorney General Merrick Garland — who has beencaught in the crossfire of Republican attacks on the president’s son — is also on the guest list. Garland has found himself fending off repeated attacks from the GOP, which have only increased in intensity since the news of the plea deal and the federal indictment of former President Donald Trump.

Several other members of the Biden family are also expected to attend the event, as are a mass of elected officials, White House officials, business leaders and celebrities.

The nation’s top abortion rights groups are expected to endorse President Joe Biden’s reelection bid at an event Friday in Washington, according to four people familiar with the plans.

EMILY’s List and NARAL Pro-Choice America are scheduled to announce their joint endorsement at a rally with Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, the people said. Planned Parenthood Action Fund is likely to back the president as well, though the group was going through formal endorsement proceedings on Thursday.

The Friday event will mark the one-year anniversary of the Supreme Court’s ruling on Dobbs that overturned Roe v Wade.

The president, vice president and their spouses are all expected to speak at the event.

The endorsements are not unexpected, given Biden’s status as an incumbent and considering how front and center abortion rights have been to the Biden administration. Last week, a group of leading environmental associations and top unions also endorsed the president’s reelection effort.

This would be the third large endorsement the nascent campaign has received in the last two weeks.

The DNC and Biden campaign declined to comment.

President Joe Biden said on Thursday that his comment about “dictators” when referring to Xi Jinping would not affect recent progress in U.S.-China relations.

Biden used the term on Tuesday during a campaign event in Kentfield, Calif., while discussing a Chinese spy balloon that the U.S. downed in February. When asked about the comment during a news conference with Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India on Thursday, Biden said he expected to meet with the Chinese president sometime in the near future, adding that he did not think the incident “had any real consequence.”

“Saying what I think is facts with regard to China is just not something I’m going to change very much,” Biden said.

The detection of the balloon above the continental United States in February generated bipartisan anger about foreign surveillance of the country. The balloon was shot down off the coast of the Carolinas by an American fighter jet. Tensions over the episode delayed Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s trip to China from February to this week.

On Thursday, Biden said the spy balloon episode “caused some confusion,” but affirmed that Blinken had asuccessful trip to China, where he met with Xi and doubled down on the United States’ commitment to maintaining a relationship between the two nations.

Despite Biden’s saying that diplomatic relations would be unharmed by the “dictator” comment, it appears to have stirred unrest in China. The Chinese governmentregistered a formal protest earlier on Thursday and alsoreportedly summoned the U.S. ambassador to Beijing, R. Nicholas Burns, for an official reprimand over the comment.

Later in the news conference with Modi, Biden added that he believed U.S relations were friendlier with India than with China in part because “there is an overwhelming respect for each other because we’re both democracies.” India has long been viewed as a key ally in the U.S. effort to contain China’s global influence.

Nobody in Joe Biden’s world of big money donors is sweating it — and least not yet.

But as the president sets out for the customary end-of-quarter haul, with a big swing of fundraising events through America’s big-money alcoves, a concern has crept in. In interviews with more than a dozen bundlers and donors across the country in recent weeks, as well as late-arriving pleas reviewed by West Wing Playbook, people have expressed nervousness that early fundraisers aren’t delivering as they’d hoped.

Sure, they reason, it’s hard in the off-year when you don’t have an opponent to tear into. There will be plenty of time to ensure the future of democracy continues apace. But while the campaign believes its operation is in a good place, others in its orbit are anxious.

Two people who sent out a flurry of invites for fundraising events in California this week said they received only single-digit responses. One joked that the same two or three dozen Democrats were emailing and calling the same list — guaranteeing the low return rate they saw. An email from one fundraiser informed recipients of “limited Reduced Price Tickets” for Biden’s fundraiser Monday evening in tony Atherton, Calif., a development they attributed — dubiously — to “the demand to see the president.” The person who forwarded the email, perhaps ironically, balked at buying a ticket.

Such emails are typical among bundlers trying to bring more people into their fold, and one DNC official dismissed the early anxiety as typical sky-is-falling tactics that bundlers use every election cycle. While Biden won’t share his official fundraising numbers until the end of quarter, a person close to the campaign expressed confidence about building on a successful operation from 2020 that raised a record $1 billion and optimism from seeing significant levels of new donors at the grassroots level, which powered the campaign three years ago.

The California events this week still raised millions. Tuesday afternoon’s fundraiser in Marin County, which was hosted by Gov. Gavin Newsom, brought in roughly $2 million alone, according to an aide to the governor. But the gatherings were smaller than organizers had hoped, and had fewer new faces in the crowd. That said, the campaign ended the three-day swing encouraged by the events in California.

Another Biden bundler described the struggle to sell the high-dollar tickets for a Nashville event this coming weekend with first lady Jill Biden. While the less expensive tickets were an easier sell, the fundraiser said the city’s top Democratic donors were stretched thin given the competitive mayoral and city council races taking place in August.

Biden is a notoriously poor fundraiser, having struggled with it during his prior presidential bids. But the good news this time around, as he seeks to raise $2 billion this cycle, is that he has time and little immediate need to spend. Not having a primary allows him to sock cash away for next year’s bruising general election.

The bad news about having no primary is that fundraising this early in the cycle is harder, with donors still exhausted from last fall’s midterms and less than fully engaged in an election still 16 months away. As one person with knowledge of the fundraising efforts put it: “The money they are getting now is mostly the low-hanging fruit.”

Campaign veterans will point out that’s often how it goes in the early months, with dollars freely flowing in once the opponent is clear. For comparison, former president Barack Obama raised a combined $86 million for his campaign and the DNC in the second quarter of 2011 after declaring his candidacy for reelection.

Ultimately, Democratic bundlers expect Biden will raise however much cash is required for an election cycle that, like each one before it, is all but certain to shatter records for the amount spent. And whether donors are enthused about a second Biden term or not, the prospect of former President Donald Trump taking back the White House will likely be enough to scare them into smashing the “DONATE” button.

But in the short term, finances have been a primary factor in the campaign’s slow operational launch and ramp up. Two months after Biden’s April announcement, the timing of which wastriggered in part by the hiring of a film crew to make a launch video, there are only a few people on staff under campaign manager Julie Chávez Rodríguez, who is currently working out of the Democratic National Committee’s offices in Washington.

Relying almost entirely still on the DNC’s data, research and communications teams and holding off on renting space for a separate headquarters has allowed the campaign to spend almost nothing so far. Biden, in fact, is the first presidential candidate to begin the cycle with joint fundraising agreements between his campaign and state parties in all 50 states and Washington. That coordination, a point of emphasis for Biden’s political operation in the lull between presidential election cycles, is expected to mean more staffers and volunteers on the ground in key states.

But for all the good spin about the structure in place, a simple truth remains about the state of Biden’s campaign coffers: his team isn’t really giving a detailed picture of it. After its video launch, the campaign did not disclose how much it brought in from donors in the first 24 or 48 hours. The first clear picture will come next month, once its first quarterly FEC report is disclosed.

Hunter Biden’s plea deal may resolve his immediate legal troubles, but it has only exacerbated the persistent debate over whether the president’s son is being treated too harshly, too leniently or just like any other citizen.

Republicans are bashing the agreement — which allows Biden to plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax crimes and avoid prison on a felony gun charge if he stays out of trouble — as an outrageous sweetheart deal. But independent legal experts say the truth is more complicated.

Two former IRS lawyers said Biden’s deal is not an outlier and is similar to what ordinary taxpayers could expect if investigated for similar conduct. Two other former tax officials told POLITICO that Biden could have faced stiffer charges.

And while former President Donald Trump is railing against the deal, experts noted an irony: Trump himself likely could have gotten a similar deal if he had cooperated with federal investigators eyeing his retention of government documents. Instead, Trump is accused of obstructing those investigators and is now under indictment and facing significant prison time.

Maggie Abdo-Gomez, a Miami tax attorney and former IRS lawyer, said it’s rare for people to face criminal charges for simply failing to pay their taxes.

“I’ve only seen them — one time — prosecute someone for failure to pay taxes,” she said. “Because the truth is, if we prosecuted for failure to pay taxes, the jails would be full. Forget the drug dealers and the murderers and everybody else. I have a small practice, and I’ve got tons of people that owe taxes.”

“The laws were enforced as if it had been anybody else,” she added, regarding Hunter’s case. “I would say probably a little stricter, because failure to pay is very common.”

Caroline Ciraolo, acting head of the Justice Department’s Tax Division for the last year of the Obama administration, said the case’s resolution didn’t strike her as outside the norm. If the Justice Department had found evidence that Hunter Biden lied or took other “affirmative acts” to dodge his taxes, he likely would have faced tougher charges, she said.

“If there was evidence of affirmative conduct, then under DOJ policy the charge would have been felony evasion of payment,” she added. “And that’s not the case here. And after five years and an investigation that crossed two administrations on different sides of the aisle, I would imagine that if there was evidence of affirmative conduct, we would not be looking at the information we’re looking at right now.”

But that’s not a consensus view. Kathy Enstrom, who spent more than two decades doing criminal investigation work at the IRS, said the president’s son could have faced tougher charges. She left the IRS two years ago, while the Biden investigation was ongoing, but said she had no visibility into the probe. Usually, she said, agents in IRS Criminal Investigation recommend felony charges in cases like this one.

“This is a little bit unique in terms of how they’re utilizing the 7203 misdemeanor charge,” she said, referring to the provision of the U.S. code under which Biden is pleading guilty. “I just haven’t seen that too often, mostly because the agents of IRS CI work the most egregious cases, and when they move forward with investigations, they’re looking toward a felony conviction, not necessarily something less than that. The resources of IRS CI are very limited and so that’s their main goal, ultimately — a felony conviction.”

Mark Milton, who spent four years as a trial attorney in the Justice Department’s Tax Division, also said misdemeanor tax charges are unusual. He added that the court filings detailing the charges were “very bare bones,” which gives the public — and the judge who will handle sentencing — minimal clues regarding Hunter Biden’s financial wrongdoing.

“In my experience, prosecutors want felonies in tax cases,” he said. “The fact that he’s only pleading guilty to misdemeanors suggests special treatment.”

Attorney General Merrick Garland has sharply pushed back against allegations of special treatment, including in new comments on Wednesday. He noted that the U.S. attorney who supervised the investigation and agreed to the plea deal was appointed by Trump.

The plea deal includes a so-called diversion program – sometimes used for defendants with substance abuse issues — that will result in prosecutors dropping the gun charge if Hunter Biden complies with the program’s conditions. The charge itself — possessing a firearm while being a user of illegal drugs — is not a charge the Justice Department frequently prosecutes.

Brandon Beck, formerly an appellate lawyer in the Office of the Federal Public Defender for the Northern District of Texas, said that the Justice Department may have been wary of a constitutional challenge to the gun law.

“It’s something that’s probably a little bit unusual, but it could be explained by the constitutional problems with (g)(3),” Beck said, referring to the statutory provision that prohibits drug users from having guns. “Or it could be explained by preferential treatment of the son of the president. And how would you know? They both could explain it.”

“I would always think, if the president’s your dad, your life’s a little bit easier,” he added.

Trump himself has claimed on social media that the plea deal is “a massive COVERUP & FULL SCALE ELECTION INTERFERENCE ‘SCAM’ THE LIKES OF WHICH HAS NEVER BEEN SEEN IN OUR COUNTRY BEFORE.”

But Elkan Abramowitz, a long-time Manhattan criminal defense attorney, said Trump himself could have gotten a similar deal if he had fully cooperated with investigators scrutinizing his retention of classified documents.

“I think that if Trump wanted to work out a deal for the documents case, he would have gotten a misdemeanor as well under similar arrangements,” he said. “So I don’t think there’s anything extraordinary.”

President Joe Biden called Chinese President Xi Jinping a dictator on Tuesday when speaking about a spy balloon that the U.S. shot down in February.

“The reason why Xi Jinping got very upset in terms of when I shot that balloon down with two box cars full of spy equipment is he didn’t know it was there,” Biden said in remarks at a campaign event in Kentfield, Calif., according to a White House pool report. “That was the great embarrassment for dictators, when they didn’t know what happened.”

Military reports about an unidentified Chinese surveillance balloon traversing continental U.S. made headlines at the beginning of February, sparking bipartisan outrage and concern about foreign intrusion into American airspace. A few days later, an American fighter jet shot the balloon down off the coast of the Carolinas.

“It was blown off course up through Alaska and then down through the United States and he didn’t know about it,” Biden said about the balloon’s path. Biden didn’t specify why he thought was the case.

Biden’s comments come on the heels of Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s trip to China, where he met with Xi on Monday. Blinken’s trip was delayed from February because of the spy balloon incident. The two countries have expressed an intention to continue dialogue amid several ongoing political concerns, including the status of Taiwan and China’s role in the American opioid epidemic.

In comments during his trip, Blinken remarked that the two countries remained far apart, but both held a desire to maintain a meaningful relationship. “The United States is committed to doing that,” he said.

Hunter Biden’s plea deal to misdemeanor tax and gun charges Tuesday was met with a mixture of sadness and relief by his father’s inner circle.

The president himself privately told confidants that he was proud of his son for taking responsibility for his actions, according to two people familiar with the conversations, even as his team expects the political attacks to only intensify.

Several people close to the elder Biden portrayed him as having been deeply anxious for months about his son’s legal fortunes and frustrated at the slow pace of the investigation. Biden had repeatedly barked to confidants that he could not understand why his son was being made to twist in the wind for five years, concerned the legal limbo could create a stress that would trigger his son’s demons, according to those people in the inner circle, who spoke about private matters on condition of anonymity.

Though President Biden had earlier insisted that his son had “done nothing wrong,” members of Biden’s inner circle took great comfort in knowing that, with a guilty plea, Hunter likely would not serve prison time.

Theend of the investigation would be a marker, the first couple hoped, of a new era in Hunter Biden’s life. Biden calls to check on his son nearly every day, people close to him said, to voice his love and concern and support for Hunter staying sober. Those close to the president have long worried far more about the personal toll of the Hunter Biden investigations on the elder Biden.

“The President and First Lady love their son and support him as he continues to rebuild his life,” said a White House spokesman. “We will have no further comment.”

But while a personal weight may have lifted for the president, a political one remains. Biden’s inner circle had prepared for Republican attacks whether or not Hunter Biden was charged. On Tuesday, Republicans claimed the plea deal represented biased justice — a privileged son who got off easy.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) told reporters that the plea deal “is continuing to show the two-tier system in America.” Former President Donald Trump, whose owntrial date was set Monday following his indictment by the Department of Justice, smashed out an all-caps social media screed alleging a “COVERUP.” He equated Biden’s sentence to “A TRAFFIC TICKET.” House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) saidBiden’s “sweetheart plea deal [would] have no impact on” his panel’s investigations.

Many in the West Wing were quick to scoff at the GOP claims, noting that the U.S. attorney who brought the charges was appointed by Trump. Moreover, they believed the outcome would serve to only underscore Biden’s insistence that the White House and DOJ be separate, noting the historic nature of a criminal charge being levied against a sitting president’s son.

The plea deal comes against the backdrop of Trump’s own growing legal troubles. Mere minutes before the news broke, a Florida federal judge ordered the trial into Trump’s handling of classified documents begin in August.

While the cases are, inevitably, to be compared, there are key differences between them. Hunter Biden cooperated with the government and Trump did not, refusing to return classified government documents and, according to theaffidavit detailing the 37-count indictment against him, instructing aides to hide the material from federal agents.

President Bidenordered his staff and the DNC to remain silent about Trump’s trials (a demand that would not change in the immediate aftermath of the Hunter deal, according to several officials familiar) while Republicans made no such promise and quickly signaled they would continue their own probes into the younger Biden’s business dealings.

The political outcome of such choices remains to be seen. But Biden advisers point out that Trump made many of these allegations during the 2020 campaign, even springing one of Hunter’s ex-business partners as a surprise guest at the last 2020 general election debate. It had little impact.

For the president, the political considerations around his son can sometimes get lost amid the emotional ones. His team had prepared for a variety of outcomes but some aides found it difficult to broach the subject with him. Hunter Biden has written extensively about the challenges in his life, including his addictions and struggle to cope with the 1972 car accident that killed his mother and sister and critically injured him and his brother, Beau Biden He also lived much of his life in the shadow of Beau, the former Delaware attorney general who died of brain cancer in 2015, at the age of 46.

Hunter kept a low profile during the 2020 presidential campaign but has recently taken on a more public role. He appeared with his father at events including the state dinner for French President Emmanuel Macron in December. And he was a nearly constant presence at the president’s side at nearly every stop during last month’s trip to Ireland, their ancestral homeland.

But there have been recent sightings that serve as a reminder of the unfortunate headlines that he can sometimes create. Hunter Biden appeared in an Arkansas courtroom last month as part of a bitter dispute with the mother of his 4-year-old child over reducing his child support payments. The mother of the child, Lunden Roberts, has accused the younger Biden of ignoring court orders to provide information about his finances and has asked a judge to declare him in contempt and have him jailed until he complies.

At an artificial intelligence roundtable event in California, the president offered only a brief comment when asked about Hunter’s plea deal: “I’m very proud of my son.”

President Joe Biden will roll out the glitziest of welcomes for India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi this week. It will be a nod to New Delhi’s rise that masks the complications it brings, including what critics charge is an administration’s prioritization of traditional geopolitics over human rights.

Though he leads the world’s largest democracy, Modi has ruled as an autocratic-leaning Hindu nationalist whose government has overseen a crackdown on everyone from journalists to political opposition leaders as part of a larger targeting of Indian Muslims.

For Biden, this is more than a mere inconvenience. Human rights advocates have criticized him not just for hosting Modi, but for throwing him a state dinner, a prestigious honor bestowed upon only two other foreign leaders since Biden took office.

In private, White House officials concede they are bound by realpolitik. India is viewed as a crucial partner in the United States’ rivalry with China. More broadly, the global contest between democracies and autocracies has defined Biden’s foreign policy and the president has made the decision to cozy up to the region’s democracy, even if it is a deeply flawed one.

White House officials pledge Biden will privately take Modi to task over human rights. But that carries far less symbolism than a public rebuke. More generally, foreign policy excerpts agree that the U.S. doesn’t have much to gain in shunning the Indian leader.

“The United States needs India as a strategic partner to balance against China both in South Asia and in the Indo-Pacific and India needs the United States as it develops a more prosperous and green future,” said Caroline Grey of the Eurasia Group, a foreign affairs think tank. “U.S.-India relations have never been better, which might come as a surprise given India’s reluctance to impose sanctions on Russia after its invasion of Ukraine. In fact, the war in Ukraine likely reminded the Biden administration of the importance of India to its interests.”

Modi is set to arrive in Washington this week after a stop at the United Nations. His itinerary includes an address to Congress and meetings with Biden at the White House.

But the showiest moment will be a state dinner on Thursday, an honor normally reserved for close allies. So far, only French President Emmanuel Macron and South Korean leader Yoon Suk Yeol have been feted by the Biden administration in such an extravagant fashion.

The dinner will further illustrate a Modi ascendant. India just became the world’s most populous nation, his nation’s economy is surging, and he will host the world’s leaders at the G-20 in New Delhi this fall.

“It signals that the Biden administration wants to accord India the distinction of being seen as one among the closest U.S. partners and allies — even though India is not a U.S. ally, and does not seek to become one,” said Alyssa Ayres, who served as a deputy assistant secretary of State for South Asia during the Obama years. “India places a high priority on its own independence.”

While White House officials view Modi with wariness, the U.S. continues to court him as an essential bulwark on the far side of the globe. Biden has leaned on Modi not to support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. While India has not offered Moscow any direct assistance, it has continued to purchase its gas, helping Russian President Vladimir Putin fund his war efforts.

But India’s biggest role, the administration believes, could be providing a check on China. The U.S. has elevated India as part of the Quad alliance — along with Australia and Japan — to reinforce democracy’s position in the Pacific and has pushed New Delhi to act as a buffer against the economic and territorial ambitions of Xi Jinping.

Biden administration officials have said they are not blind to India’s faults and troubles. Instead, they say in dealing with a geo-strategically vital country of 1.4 billion people, they prefer to level their criticisms behind the scenes.

But doing so, human rights activists argue, means offering a tacit blessing to the abuses taking place under Modi’s watch — and it forfeits an opportunity to improve the situation.

“The U.S. government has been far too quiet about India’s deteriorating human rights situation under Modi,” said John Sifton, Asia advocacy director at Human Rights Watch, “including India’s slide toward authoritarianism and the increasing hate speech and persecution of religious minorities.”

Sifton believes that only a public upbraiding may enact change.

“Saying nothing publicly will be seen as a green light by Modi and his leadership,” he said, “signaling that they can continue down the path they have taken towards authoritarianism and vilification of Muslims.”

When Modi came into power in 2014, former President Barack Obama largely kept him close, despite his record of anti-Muslim sentiment. In fact, nearly a decade earlier, Modi had been denied a U.S. visa on religious freedom grounds after being accused of tacitly supporting Hindu extremists who attacked Muslims years earlier in the Indian state of Gujarat, where he was chief minister.

Former President Donald Trump also sought to curb China’s influence, but he made little pretense of caring about human rights. He warmly embraced Modi at a 2019 “Howdy, Modi!” rally in Houston. The following February, Trump visited Modi in New Delhi and attended a massive rally in his honor just days before the world came to a halt at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. Many Hindu nationals backed Trump, who publicly also displayed an antipathy toward Muslims.

Human rights advocates cite a litany of abuses by the Modi government, including the passage of a law that discriminates against Muslims by making religion a basis of citizenship and the revocation of the autonomy granted to the majority-Muslim Jammu and Kashmir region. Some Indian states also passed “anti-conversion” laws that appear to target Muslim men who marry Hindu women. These and other moves have played out against a backdrop of more violence against religious minorities and crackdowns on government critics and journalists.

Many presidents have had to deal with unsavory foreign elements to advance U.S. political interests. Biden, when he ran for president, trashed Trump’s seeming indifference to suffering around the world, promising to put human rights at the “center” of his foreign policy. But he and his team have also made deals with nations like Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

Modi was among the first leaders with whom Biden held a virtual meeting. Biden elevated the Quad and he spent time with Modi on the sidelines of the G-7 in Japan last month. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan was in India in recent days to finalize the details of the summit, which White House aides preview will include new economic agreements, climate commitments, and deals on semiconductors and other technologies.

“As we do with other nations around the world, we regularly engage with Indian government officials at senior levels on human rights concerns, including freedom of religion or belief and media freedom,” said Adam Hoge, a National Security Council spokesperson. “Our view is that a secure, prosperous, democratic, and pluralistic India, one that is capable of reinforcing shared values abroad, is a natural partner for the United States.”

Aides defend the decision to hold the state dinner, suggesting it is a representation of the administration’s appreciation of India’s new engagement with the world and, they say, its commitment to be a good global citizen. And Biden aides say the White House has previously chided allies about bad behavior — including, recently, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over his court reform plan — but has tended to do so out of the spotlight.

“With the emphasis the president has placed on democracy as a central pillar of U.S. policy,” said Ayres, now dean of the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University, “I can’t see how he would not have a private conversation about U.S. concerns.”

The United States and China have pledged to stabilize their badly deteriorated ties during a critical visit to Beijing by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who met Monday with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

It remains to be seen whether the two countries can resolve their most important disagreements, many of which have international financial, security and stability implications.

The two sides expressed a willingness to keep talking, but there was little indication that either is prepared to bend from its positions on issues ranging from trade, to Taiwan, to human rights conditions in China and Hong Kong, to Chinese military assertiveness in the South China Sea, to Russia’s war in Ukraine.

At the meeting with Blinken, Xi pronounced himself pleased with the outcome of Blinken’s earlier meetings with two top Chinese diplomats, and said the two countries had agreed to resume a program of understandings that he and President Joe Biden agreed to at a meeting in Bali last year.

“The Chinese side has made our position clear, and the two sides have agreed to follow through the common understandings President Biden and I had reached in Bali,” Xi said.

That agenda had been thrown into jeopardy in recent months, notably after the U.S. shot down a Chinese surveillance balloon over its airspace in February, and amid escalated military activity in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea. Combined with disputes over human rights, trade and opiate production, the list of problem areas is daunting.

But Xi suggested the worst could be over.

“The two sides have also made progress and reached agreement on some specific issues,” Xi said without elaborating, according to a transcript of the remarks released by the State Department. “This is very good.”

“I hope that through this visit, Mr. Secretary, you will make more positive contributions to stabilizing China-U.S. relations,” Xi added.

In his remarks to Xi during the 35-minute session at the Great Hall of the People, which was not announced until an hour before it started, Blinken said “the United States and China have an obligation and responsibility to manage our relationship.”

“The United States is committed to doing that,” Blinken said. “It’s in the interest of the United States, in the interests of China, and in the interest of the world.”

Blinken described his earlier discussions with senior Chinese officials as “candid and constructive.”

Despite his presence in China, Blinken and other U.S. officials had played down the prospects for any significant breakthroughs on the most vexing issues facing the planet’s two largest economies.

Instead, these officials have emphasized the importance of the two countries establishing and maintaining better lines of communication.

Blinken is the highest-level U.S. official to visit China since President Joe Biden took office, and the first secretary of state to make the trip in five years. His visit is expected to usher in a new round of visits by senior U.S. and Chinese officials, possibly including a meeting between Xi and Biden in the coming months.

Blinken met earlier Monday with China’s top diplomat Wang Yi for about three hours, according to a U.S. official.

China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs wrote in a statement that Blinken’s visit “coincides with a critical juncture in China-U.S. relations, and it is necessary to make a choice between dialogue or confrontation, cooperation or conflict,” and blamed the “U.S. side’s erroneous perception of China, leading to incorrect policies towards China” for the current “low point” in relations.

It said the U.S. had a responsibility to halt “the spiraling decline of China-U.S. relations to push it back to a healthy and stable track” and that Wang had “demanded that the U.S. stop hyping up the ‘China threat theory,’ lift illegal unilateral sanctions against China, abandon suppression of China’s technological development, and refrain from arbitrary interference in China’s internal affairs.”

The State Department said Blinken “underscored the importance of responsibly managing the competition between the United States and the PRC through open channels of communication to ensure competition does not veer into conflict.”

In the first round of talks on Sunday, Blinken met for nearly six hours with Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang, after which both countries said they had agreed to continue high-level discussions. However, there was no sign that any of the most fractious issues between them were closer to resolution.

Both the U.S. and China said Qin had accepted an invitation from Blinken to visit Washington but Beijing made clear that “the China-U.S. relationship is at the lowest point since its establishment.” That sentiment is widely shared by U.S. officials.

Blinken’s visit comes after his initial plans to travel to China were postponed in February after the shootdown of a Chinese surveillance balloon over the U.S.

A snub by the Chinese leader would have been a major setback to the effort to restore and maintain communications at senior levels.

And Biden said over the weekend that he hoped to be able to meet with Xi in the coming months to take up the plethora of differences that divide them.

In his meetings on Sunday, Blinken also pressed the Chinese to release detained American citizens and to take steps to curb the production and export of fentanyl precursors that are fueling the opioid crisis in the United States.

Xi had offered a hint of a possible willingness to reduce tensions on Friday, saying in a meeting with Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates that the United States and China can cooperate to “benefit our two countries.”

Since the cancellation of Blinken’s trip in February, there have been some high-level engagements. CIA chief William Burns traveled to China in May, while China’s commerce minister traveled to the U.S. And Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan met with senior Chinese foreign policy adviser Wang Yi in Vienna in May.

But those have been punctuated by bursts of angry rhetoric from both countries over the Taiwan Strait, their broader intentions in the Indo-Pacific, China’s refusal to condemn Russia for its war against Ukraine, and U.S. allegations from Washington that Beijing is attempting to boost its worldwide surveillance capabilities, including in Cuba.

And, earlier this month, China’s defense minister rebuffed a request from U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin for a meeting on the sidelines of a security symposium in Singapore, a sign of continuing discontent.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken ended his first of two days of meetings in Beijing on Sunday with rhetoric suggesting that the two countries are taking steps to curb the bilateral acrimony that has curdled the U.S.-China relationship.

Blinken and Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang emerged from their meeting with twin readouts describing that encounter as “candid and constructive.” Blinken secured an agreement from Qin to continue their discussions in Washington “at a mutually suitable time.” Both Blinken and Qin stressed the need for the two countries to improve people-to-people contacts that Qin said should include educational exchanges and an expansion of passenger flights between the two countries.

That language suggests that both Blinken and Qin are inching toward an off-ramp from months of rancor that Qin said had driven bilateral ties to “their lowest level since the establishment of diplomatic relations” in 1979. The fallout over a Chinese spy balloon found traversing the continental United States scuttled Blinken’s originally scheduled trip in February and imposed a months-long effective freeze on high-level official contacts.

Qin implicitly referenced the balloon incident by urging the Biden administration to “handle unexpected eventualities calmly, professionally and rationally.”

Blinken stressed the need for the two countries to reduce the potential for “misperception and miscalculation” and the Biden administration’s desire to “explore cooperation on shared transnational issues” where possible,” according to a State Department readout of the meeting. However, neither side signaled whether Blinken will get a meeting on Monday with Chinese paramount leader Xi Jinping.

Xi met last week with visiting Microsoft founder Bill Gates, suggesting that a failure to organize a Xi-Blinken meeting will constitute a deliberate snub by Chinese authorities.

The ambiguity of Blinken’s readout indicates little substantive progress on his agenda items that include concerns over rising tensions over Taiwan, unjustly jailed U.S. citizens in China and Beijing’s alignment with Russia’s war on Ukraine. Qin made no mention of arbitrarily detained Americans in China or the war in Ukraine, but reiterated his “stern position” on Taiwan and urged the U.S. “to put into practice its commitment not to support ‘Taiwan independence.’”