Woodside, California | President Joe Biden and China’s Xi Jinping defused growing concern over conflict in the Pacific by agreeing to reopen military communications channels and lines of high-level diplomacy in a sign that frosty relations between the superpowers have started to thaw.

In their first face-to-face meeting in more than a year on Wednesday (Thursday AEDT), the two leaders spoke for four hours, which, according to Mr Biden, involved “being blunt with one another” on issues from Taiwan’s status to conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza.