President Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping spoke by phone last month and discussed the importance of maintaining open lines of communication, the White House said.

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Michael Reynolds/EPA/Shutterstock; Greg Baker/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

WASHINGTON—White House officials are planning to schedule a virtual meeting between President Biden and Chinese President

Xi Jinping

in coming weeks, a senior administration official said.

National security adviser Jake Sullivan met in Zurich with Chinese Communist Party Politburo member and Director of the Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission Yang Jiechi, where the two discussed a range of issues. Mr. Xi isn’t expected to attend the coming G-20 meeting, so Messrs. Sullivan and Yang discussed the two leaders having a virtual engagement by the end of the year.

“We do see today as a productive step,” the senior administration official said.

Mr. Biden and Mr. Xi spoke by phone last month and discussed the importance of maintaining open lines of communication, the White House said. U.S. officials believe diplomacy between the top leaders of the U.S. and China is key.

“Sustaining that intense competition and managing that intense competition really requires intense diplomacy,” the official said.

The planned discussion comes after Beijing stepped up sorties of military aircraft near Taiwan earlier this month, while the U.S., U.K. and other countries have deployed an armada of warships in exercises east of the island.

Meanwhile, the Biden administration has begun defining its China trade policy, aiming for new talks with Beijing but keeping existing tariffs in place.

Write to Gordon Lubold at Gordon.Lubold@wsj.com

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