According to U.S. President Joe Biden, he informed his Chinese colleague Xi Jinping on Monday that if Beijing is unable to rein in North Korea’s weapons development programs, Washington would strengthen its security stance in Asia.

After their first face-to-face meeting since Xi became office, Biden said at a press conference that they had candid discussions about a variety of issues that are causing the worst ties between the United States and China in decades.

According to U.S. President Joe Biden, he informed his Chinese colleague Xi Jinping on Monday that if Beijing is unable to rein in North Korea’s weapons development programs, Washington would strengthen its security stance in Asia.

After their first face-to-face meeting since Xi became office, Biden said at a press conference that they had candid discussions about a variety of issues that are causing the worst ties between the United States and China in decades.

The two sides had set up a mechanism for more frequent communications and Secretary of State Antony Blinken will travel to China to follow-up on discussions, he said.

“I think we understand each other,” Biden said.

Ahead of their talks, the two leaders smiled and shook hands warmly in front of their national flags at a hotel on Indonesia’s Bali island, a day before a Group of 20 (G20) summit set to be fraught with tension over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

However, Biden brought up a number of difficult topics during the meeting, according to the White House, including raising U.S. objections to China’s “coercive and increasingly aggressive actions toward Taiwan”, Beijing’s “non-market economic practices”, and practices in “Xinjiang, Tibet, and Hong Kong, and human rights more broadly”.

Biden said beforehand he was committed to keeping lines of communication open on a personal and government level.

“As the leaders of our two nations, we share responsibility, in my view, to show that China and the United States can manage our differences, prevent competition from turning into conflict, and to find ways to work together on urgent global issues that require our mutual cooperation,” Biden said in remarks in front of reporters.

Neither leader wore a mask to ward off COVID, though members of their delegations did.