The United States and China will resume military communications after a long period of radio silence, US President Joe Biden said after a face-to-face meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, calling it an “important” step. “We are back to direct, open, clear and direct communications,” said Biden for whom “major progress” was made during this meeting. But the Taiwan issue remains. “Vital mistakes on one side or the other can cause real, concrete problems with a country like China or any other major country,” Biden stressed.
The Taiwan Knot
According to the White House, Biden also insisted during the meeting on maintaining “peace and stability” in the South China Sea. “With respect to Taiwan, President Biden emphasized that our One China policy has not changed and has been consistent across decades and administrations,” the White House said in a summary of the meeting. “He reiterated that the United States opposes any unilateral change to the status quo on either side, that we expect cross-Strait differences to be resolved by peaceful means, and that the world has an interest in peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait”. Biden also “called for restraint” in China’s “use of military activity in and around the Taiwan Strait,” the White House said.
The US president then asked the Chinese leader to ”respect the electoral process in Taiwan”, stating that ”Taiwan is the most dangerous issue in relations between the United States and China”. Xi, for his part, stated that ”China will achieve its reunification and this goal cannot be stopped”. And he asked Biden to ”stop arming Taiwan, honor her commitment not to support Taiwan’s independence, and support the peaceful reunification of China”.
During the exchange with Biden, Xi also expressed concern that the Taiwan issue is the largest and potentially most dangerous conflict in US-China relations.
Xi “the dictator”
Chinese President Xi Jinping ”is a dictator”, Biden said among other things during a press conference at the end of the meeting with Xi. ”He is a dictator in the sense that he governs a communist country, based on a form of government totally different from ours”, said the US president who asked Chinese leader Xi Jinping to use his influence to try to calm tensions global and in particular to try to put pressure on Iran, so that it does not widen the conflict between Israel and Hamas. In the four-hour meeting, it was Biden who spoke mainly to Xi about the conflict in the Middle East, while the Chinese leader listened, as reported by an American official.
A trade dispute, accusations of espionage, tensions over Taiwan and China’s position in the war in Ukraine have strained US-China relations. But overall, the United States is intent on steering relations in an orderly direction and preventing fierce competition from escalating into full-blown conflict. In Beijing, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said this week that China wants to return relations to a “stable path.” Illicit drugs from China were also on the agenda, and leaders agreed to resume “bilateral cooperation to combat the production and trafficking of illicit drugs globally, including synthetic drugs such as fentanyl,” the House said White.
Climate changes
The two leaders also discussed climate change, with Bident saying Washington “stands ready to work with (China) to address transnational challenges, such as health security and debt and climate finance in developing countries.” and emerging markets,” the White House said. Washington and Beijing have both reaffirmed the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement, a treaty that aims to hold the increase in global average temperatures to well below 2 degrees Celsius – and possibly 1.5 degrees – above levels preindustrial.
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