Joe Biden reaffirmed the United States’ tough line on human rights violations and regional enlargement in his first telephone conversation with President Xi Jinping since its adoption.
Xi defended China’s policies as sovereignty, but said the US leadership confrontation would be a disaster, and according to state media, called on the two parties to restore the means to prevent misjudgments.
The call came hours after announcing Biden’s establishment of a Pentagon task force on China and a senior State Department official meeting with Taiwan’s US representative.
The U.S.’s support for Taiwan, which fights off aggression and threats of ‘unification’ from Beijing, is one of the most sensitive issues in US-China relations and one that Biden raised during the call.
“I spoke to President Xi today to express his sincere wishes to the Chinese people for the new lunar year,” Biden said. ‘I also expressed concern about Beijing’s economic practices, human rights violations and coercion of Taiwan. I told him I would cooperate with China if it benefited the American people. ”
A White House report on the conversation said Biden also raised the issue of Hong Kong repression and human rights abuses in Xinjiang and China’s “increasingly assertive actions in the region”. They also discussed global health security, climate change and weapons prevention, the White House said.
Chinese state media said the two leaders “exchanged greetings during the Chinese New Year and had an in-depth exchange of views on the bilateral relationship and important international and regional issues”. Xi also warned Biden to handle matters such as Hong Kong, Taiwan and Xinjiang carefully, which he said were “internal matters” over China’s territorial integrity.
According to a call from the state media, Xi reiterated that cooperation is “the only right choice” and that the two countries must properly manage disputes in a constructive manner.
“Cooperation can help the two countries and the world achieve great things, while confrontation is certainly a disaster,” he said, according to a separate report from the South China Morning Post.
The new Pentagon task force on China consists of 15 members led by a senior adviser to Lloyd Austin, the department’s secretary. The group will review US national security and military strategy on China.
Biden’s government has promised to continue to provide ‘rock solid’ support to Taiwan, and predicts ‘extreme competition’ between the two countries. He suggested he become familiar with Xi from his time as vice president.
Prior to the Xi call, a senior administration official told reporters that the Biden team had found ‘merits’ in the Trump administration’s’ basic proposal of intense strategic competition with China … but we have deep problems found with the way the Trump administration went ‘that competition, “Axios reported.
The Trump administration’s relationship with Beijing began warmly, with the White House describing Trump’s first phone call with the Chinese leader as ‘extremely cordial’. During his tenure, however, relations increased sharply, with tensions over trade, the pandemic, and China’s oppression and abuse of human rights and regional neighbors, including Taiwan, and in the South China Sea. U.S. arms sales to Taiwan increased dramatically under Trump, and as China’s military expanded and modernized, tensions across the Strait increased.
Biden’s government is reviewing the sanctions and tariffs imposed by Trump, but has said it will pursue a stricter line than what took place during Obama’s term. It has raised the decades-old six assurances made by the island government on the same level as the three communities outlining China-US relations, and the Taiwanese Relations Act, which requires the US to provide material support to Taiwan for its self-defense. .
China’s military has reacted aggressively. Late last month, he sent more than a dozen fighter jets, bombers and reconnaissance aircraft to Taiwan’s airspace zone for two consecutive days, far more than the usual type of two or three aircraft sent regularly over the past year. It was widely interpreted as a message to the newly inaugurated Biden.
Earlier Wednesday in Washington, Taiwan’s de facto ambassador to the United States, Hsiao Bi-khim, said she had met with East Asian and Pacific Foreign Minister Sung Kim as acting foreign minister.
Hsiao said she had a ‘good meeting’ with Kim and his team, ‘where we dealt with many issues of mutual interest, reflecting our strong and broad partnership’.
The State Department office tweeted a photo of the meeting, with the two representatives standing together and wearing face masks.
“The US is deepening ties with Taiwan, a leading democracy and important economic and security partner,” he said on his Twitter account.