United States President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping have opened their first in-person meeting since the former took office nearly two years ago, aiming to “manage” differences between the superpowers as they compete for global influence amid increasing economic and security tensions.

Xi and Biden greeted each other with a handshake at a luxury resort on Indonesia’s Bali island on Monday, where they are attending the Group of 20 (G20) summit of large economies, before they sat down for what was expected to be a conversation lasting several hours.

“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 becoming anything ever near conflict, and to find ways to work together on urgent global issues that require our mutual cooperation,” Biden said to open the meeting.

Xi said he hoped they would “chart the right course for the China-US relationship” and that he was prepared for a “candid and in-depth exchange of views” with Biden.

Reporting from the G20 summit, Al Jazeera’s diplomatic editor James Bays said there was little hope that anything particularly substantial would come out of the meeting.

“It’s about two leaders who know each other from the past, getting back to knowing each other again, and building a little more trust to try to remove some of the tension from the relationship,” Bays said.

“Both sides are saying they have got to find a way to work together. The White House briefing said they need red lines and have to work out what each other’s limits are on key issues.”

The two leaders entered the highly anticipated meeting with bolstered political standing at home.

Democrats triumphantly held onto control of the US Senate, with a chance to boost their ranks by one in a run-off election in Georgia next month, while Xi was awarded an unprecedented third five-year term in October by the Communist Party’s National Congress, a break with tradition.

“We have very little misunderstanding,” Biden told reporters in Cambodia on Sunday, where he participated in a gathering of Southeast Asian nations before leaving for Indonesia. “We just got to figure out where the red lines are and … what are the most important things to each of us going into the next two years.”

Biden added: “His circumstance has changed, to state the obvious, at home.” The president said of his own situation: “I know I’m coming in stronger.”