Vice President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping ended more than five hours of face-to-face meetings in Beijing without resolving the rising international tensions over China's declaration of a new air-defense zone, leaving questions over the next moves for each power and U.S. allies in the region.

Mr. Biden, visiting Beijing on Wednesday, pressed the point that the White House "doesn't recognize" the zone over the East China Sea and wants China's leadership to avoid actions that could lead to confrontations with Japan and other nations, a U.S. official said.

Mr. Xi, in turn, laid out China's position in the dispute, but made no commitment to rolling back the zone, U.S. officials said. Rather, he indicated he would "take on board" Mr. Biden's requests.

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A U.S. official, briefing reporters in Beijing after the meetings, said: "From our perspective, it's up to China. And we'll see how things unfold in the coming days and weeks."

As part of his argument in favor of reducing tensions, Mr. Biden told Mr. Xi that China should adopt a series of measures to restore trust and confidence among neighbors in the region, including by establishing a system of emergency communications, or hot lines, that would rapidly connect officials from China and Japan, and possibly other countries.

"The most urgent thing is, we want them to work with Japan and South Korea directly to do confidence-building measures," said a senior administration official.

In an illustration of the fine points of superpower diplomacy, the U.S. didn't directly ask China to rescind the air-defense identification zone it established last month. And Washington didn't expect Mr. Xi to abolish the zone by the time Mr. Biden left for a scheduled stop Thursday in South Korea.

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PING-PONG DIPLOMACY: David Cameron, seen playing table tennis at a primary school in Chengdu on Wednesday, didn't address growing regional tensions over China's new air-defense zone, but said he had no regrets about meeting with the Dalai Lama last year, a move that chilled relations with Beijing. Associated Press

"I don't think that folks had the impression the vice president would return from Asia and the defense zone would be gone," said Julianne Smith, a former national security aide to Mr. Biden. "What they wanted to do was to start a face-to-face conversation."

Mr. Biden sought to rely on an element of personal diplomacy to end a crisis that has rattled Japan and South Korea and created a new point of confrontation between the U.S. and China. People close to Mr. Biden said he has forged a strong relationship with Mr. Xi over the years, and brought those ties to bear in meetings and at dinner Wednesday.

But some analysts questioned whether Mr. Biden took the correct approach to a visit with such high stakes.

"He did well according to normal diplomatic protocol, but this wasn't a normal diplomatic situation," said Michael Auslin, director of Japan Studies at the American Enterprise Institute. "Our allies were hoping for something much stronger, and I think they're probably going to feel that they're going to be on their own."

In South Korea, Mr. Biden will try to persuade an old ally not to take actions that escalate the crisis.

Seoul last week responded to China's air-defense zone by saying it was considering expanding its own air-defense zone, impinging not only on China's claims but on a zone previously declared by Japan. A formal announcement was delayed, probably until Mr. Biden completes his visit with President Park Geun-hye.

South Korea also has a history of disagreements with Japan over territorial and historic differences, and experts saw the Chinese move last month as an opportunity for the U.S. to bring Tokyo and Seoul closer together. In light of Japan's feelings and Mr. Biden's visit, the South Koreans appeared to be moving cautiously.

Mr. Biden's trip to the region came in the midst of an unexpected outbreak of animosity over the Chinese air-defense zone, put into place over islands that are the subject of a long-running dispute with Japan.

The U.S. initially challenged the Chinese by flying B-52 bombers and other military aircraft through the zone without complying with requirements to notify Beijing.

However, once in Beijing, Mr. Biden's first message to the Chinese leader was, "We've got to unwind this tension," the senior administration official said.
As for the new air-defense zone, "We're not going to recognize it," the official said. "The risk of escalation here is enormous. And that's why we're so intensively addressing it."

Neither leader mentioned the zone directly in their public comments, but people familiar with the talks said the two men discussed it during the course of two meetings and a dinner.

In public remarks, Mr. Xi said that while bilateral ties were generally positive, the international landscape was undergoing "profound and complex changes," noting that "regional hot-spot issues keep cropping up."

"The world, as a whole, is not tranquil," Mr. Xi said. "To strengthen cooperation and dialogue is the only right choice facing both our countries."
Mr. Biden said the U.S. relationship with China was full of promise but needed to be "based on trust, and a positive notion about the motive of one another.

On Thursday morning, Mr. Biden told executives of U.S. companies doing business in China that the country's new air zone had created "apprehension" in the region but that Beijing and Washington have an opportunity to establish "new rules for the road."

He also praised China's efforts to reform its economy, and said, "As China's economy grows, its responsibility to ensure regional stability will grow."

Japanese officials and security experts have expressed frustration by what they see as Washington's muddled response to China's aggression, a fear that has been exacerbated, rather than alleviated, so far during Mr. Biden's visit to Asia.

"We are in a very difficult position," one Japanese government official said Thursday.

Although Chinese, U.S. and Japanese military planes have likely not flown dangerously close to each other in China's zone, diplomats and analysts say, the danger lies in what happens if they narrow the gap, especially in the air over and for 12 nautical miles around the islands claimed by both China and Japan.

So far, China has mostly sent marine surveillance planes toward the islands, but they have turned around before being intercepted by Japanese fighters, according to diplomats and Western analysts.

In a confrontation between Chinese and Japanese fighters, each side would likely be under orders to ignore warnings from the other, so the encounter could quickly escalate into a contest of flying skills or even a shooting incident, analysts say.

Japanese fighters could, in theory, also be backed up by U.S. fighter jets—most likely F-15s flying from Kadena Air Base in Okinawa—though the U.S. would likely intervene only in the most extreme circumstances.

That is the least likely scenario as China has consistently avoided a direct military confrontation with forces it knows to be superior to its own, and which have trained together for several decades.

"If [Chinese fighters] engage in dogfights with Japanese fighters, they would almost certainly lose," said retired Lt. Gen. Kunio Orita of the Japan Air Self-Defense Force.

"Nobody wants to provoke a war. While this might be a change in name, in fact things will probably stay the same for the moment," said Ni Lexiong, a Shanghai-based Chinese military expert.

If China and Japan both enforce their claims around the islands, then "firing flares and warning shots, or shooting down the other side's planes, may not be far off," Song Zhongping, a Chinese defense analyst, was quoted as saying in China News Weekly magazine.

If tensions escalated, Chinese Su-30 and J-11 fighters would most likely fly from bases near Shanghai, military analysts say. Japan usually sends F-15s from Naha air base on the island of Okinawa to intercept Chinese planes that enter its zone.

Response to Mr. Biden's visit in China was muted. An editorial in the Global Times, a nationalist-leaning tabloid published by the People's Daily, played down tensions over the air-defense zone and blamed Japan for "intentionally creating a crisis" in an effort to force confrontation between the U.S. and China.

Chinese social media gave Mr. Biden a cooler reception than on his previous visit two years ago, when he charmed the online community by showing up at a family-run eatery to slurp down a bowl of lunchtime noodles.

"When Biden doesn't have the heart to show off, that means we're right," wrote one user of the Twitter-like Sina Weibo microblogging service.