LIMA – President Joe Biden is expected to use his last meeting with China’s leader, Xi Jinpingto urge him to deter North Korea from further deepening its support for Russia’s war against Ukraine.

The Saturday talks on the sidelines of the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit in Peru they come just over two months before Biden leaves office and makes way for the Republican president-elect Donald Trump. It will be Biden’s last check-in with Xi — someone the Democrat saw as the most important man on the world stage.

With the meeting final, officials say Biden will seek out Xi intensify the engagement of the Chinese to prevent further escalation of an already dangerous moment with North Korea.

Biden on Friday, along with South Korean President Yoon Seok Yul and Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, condemned the decision of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to send thousands of troops to help Moscow push back Ukrainian forces that have occupied territory in Russia’s border region of Kursk.

Biden called it “dangerous and destabilizing cooperation.”

White House officials have also expressed frustration with Beijing, which accounts for the vast majority of North Korea’s trade, for not doing more to rein in Pyongyang.

Biden, Yoon and Ishiba spent most of the 50-minute discussion focused on the issue, agreeing that “it should not be in Beijing’s interest to have this destabilizing cooperation in the region,” according to a senior official of the administration who spoke on condition of anonymity. discuss their private conversations.

The North Koreans have also supplied Russia with artillery and other munitions, according to US and South Korean intelligence officials. And the US, Japan and South Korea have expressed alarm over Pyongyang’s escalation the cadence of ballistic missile tests.

Kim ordered the test drills ahead of this month’s US election and claims progress in the build-up effort the ability to strike the continental US.

Biden and Xi have much beyond North Korea to discuss, including China’s indirect support for Russiahuman rights issues, technology and Taiwan, the autonomous democracy that Beijing claims as its own.

There are also a lot of uncertainty about what’s next for the US-China relationship under Trump, who campaigned on a promise to levy 60% tariffs on imports from China.

Already, many American companies, including Nike and eyewear retailer Warby Parker, have diversified their sourcing outside of China. Shoe brand Steve Madden says it plans to reduce imports from China up to 45% next year.

“When Xi meets with Biden, part of his audience is not just the White House or the US government,” said Victor Cha, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “It’s about American CEOs and continued American investment or trying to renew American investment in China and get rid of the perception that there’s a hostile business environment in China.”

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Biden administration officials will advise the Trump team that managing the intense competition with Beijing will likely be the most important foreign policy challenge they face.

Administration officials worry that tensions between China and Taiwan could escalate into all-out war if there is a miscalculation by either side, with catastrophic consequences for the world.

Sullivan said the Trump administration will have to deal with the Chinese military’s frequent harassment of its regional neighbors.

Clashes between Philippine and Chinese coast guards in the disputed South China Sea have become a persistent problem. Chinese coast guard vessels also regularly approach disputed islands in the East China Sea controlled by Japan near Taiwan.

Ishiba met with Xi on Friday. Later, the Japanese prime minister said he told Xi he was “extremely concerned about the situation in the East China Sea and the escalation of the activities of the People’s Liberation Army.”

The White House has been working for months to arrange Saturday’s meeting between Xi and Biden, something the Democrat has been keen to do before he leaves office in January.

Sullivan traveled to Beijing in late August to meet with his Chinese counterpart and also sat down with Xi. Beijing agreed to the meeting earlier this week.

It’s a big moment for Biden as he ends more than 50 years in politics. He saw his relationship with Xi as among the most important on the international stage and put a lot of effort into cultivating that relationship.

Biden and Xi first met on trips to the US and China when they were both vice presidents, interactions that both said left a lasting impression.

But the past four years have presented a steady stream of difficult times.

FBI this week provided new details of a federal investigation in Chinese government efforts to hack US telecommunications networks. Initial findings revealed a “broad and significant” cyber espionage campaign designed to steal information from Americans working in government and politics.

US intelligence officials have also assessed China increased sales to Russia of machine tools, microelectronics and other technologies that Moscow uses to produce missiles, tanks, planes and other weapons for use in his war against Ukraine.

And tensions flared last year after Biden ordered the downing of a Chinese spy balloon that crossed the United States.

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Associated Press writer Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo contributed.