Xi-Biden meeting seen as putting relations back on course, even as issues remain unresolved

Perhaps just shaking hands and sitting down together can be enough sometimes.

At their meeting Wednesday, U.S. President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping didn't resolve any of the major geopolitical issues dividing the world's two largest economies and chief rivals for influence, particularly among developing nations.

But it did seem to put a floor beneath a relationship that had been in free-fall over issues from trade to investment to U.S. support for Taiwan, along with human rights in regions from Tibet to Sichuan and the Asian financial hub of Hong Kong, which China administers as a semi-autonomous region while gutting its civil liberties handed over from the former British administration.

The two leaders spent four hours together at a northern California