U.S. President Joe Biden has pointed to the “possibility” of a meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping next month in San Francisco, as the strategic rivals’ leaders look to hold their first in-person talks since last November.

"There has been no such meeting set up, but it’s a possibility,” Biden said Friday at the White House.

Washington and Beijing are edging closer to setting up a Biden-Xi meeting that would take place on the sidelines of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in San Francisco from Nov. 16-17, though U.S. officials say China has not yet agreed to the plans.

Still, one U.S. official told The Washington Post this week that the odds of a summit happening were "pretty firm."

The White House has attempted to resuscitate moribund ties with Beijing since the summer by sending a spate of Cabinet-level officials to China. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Beijing in June, followed by trips by Treasury and Commerce secretaries Janet Yellen and Gina Raimondo as well as climate envoy John Kerry.

Last month, U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan also held two days of intense talks with top Chinese diplomat Wang Yi in Malta.

Wang is widely expected to visit Washington before the end of October, following through on a promised trip that U.S. officials hope will cement a date and venue for the Biden-Xi summit

But it’s unclear if Beijing will sign off on the meeting as the two sides continue to face cavernous gaps over a range of issues, including semiconductor export controls, Taiwan and the South China Sea.

The U.S. has sought to portray expanded communications with China as crucial to preventing the relationship from veering into conflict, a stance Beijing would appear to be in agreement with as Xi struggles to right a faltering economy and grapples with turbulence in his inner circle.

But Biden, himself, has in recent months done little to engender an environment conducive to talks, angering China — and Xi, in particular — by labeling the Chinese leader a dictator, calling the ruling Communist Party leadership "bad folks” and blasting China’s economic problems as a "ticking time bomb.”

In a number of editorials published in Chinese state-run media, Beijing has warned Washington that while there has been momentum toward improving relations, “what defines their ties continues to be frictions.”

“As both sides are holding a wait-and-see attitude, their relations will continue to be defined by tensions, uncertainties and mistrust,” the official China Daily said in an editorial late last month.

But the November APEC summit may be one of the last chances for the two leaders to have substantive communications on stabilizing ties over the next year as the 2024 U.S. presidential race heats up.

Biden, who has said he will seek re-election, will see his time consumed by the looming poll, which is widely expected to be a hard-fought contest. In the campaign, China is likely to be a key issue, with the president’s Republican challengers likely to target any attempts at diplomacy as him being soft on Beijing.