Chinese leader Xi Jinping and US President Joe Biden spoke on the phone Tuesday, marking the first conversation between the leaders since their historic in-person summit in November and the latest in ongoing efforts by US and Chinese officials to defuse tensions between the two superpowers.
The call comes amid heavy global turbulence – the ongoing wars in Gaza and Ukraine, and North Korea’s nuclear capabilities were among the topics discussed. Other issues that have strained the Washington-Beijing relationship also came up, including Taiwan, China’s recent provocations in the South China Sea and Beijing’s human rights abuses.
The two leaders also discussed a number of issues where US and Chinese officials see room for cooperation, including countering narcotics, the fast-developing world of artificial intelligence and climate change, according to a White House readout.
The White House described the one-hour-45-minute conversation as “candid and constructive” on a range of issues on which the leaders agreed and disagreed. Biden stressed the need to maintain “peace and stability” across the Taiwan Strait and he also raised his concerns over China’s support for Russia’s defense industry, the White House added.
China’s Foreign Ministry said the two leaders had a “candid and in-depth exchange.” In the call, Xi characterized US-China relations as “beginning to stabilize,” but he warned that “negative factors” had been growing and required “attention from both sides,” a ministry readout said.
Biden noted his worries about China’s trade tactics that the White House said harm American workers and emphasized the US will do what it must to prevent “advanced US technologies from being used to undermine our national security, without unduly limiting trade and investment.”
“The two leaders welcomed ongoing efforts to maintain open channels of communication and responsibly manage the relationship through high-level diplomacy and working-level consultations in the weeks and months ahead,” the readout stated, noting Secretary of State Antony Blinken will travel to China.
Biden also expressed concerns about TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese parent company ByteDance. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters that Biden discussed House-passed legislation that would require TikTok to be spun off from ByteDance and emphasized that it was an American national security issue.
Xi, for his part, called for the two sides to value peace, prioritize stability and honor their commitments to each other – an apparent reference to Chinese officials’ concerns about American tech and trade restrictions on China that they see as at odds with Washington’s assurances that it does not want to decouple the two nations’ economies.
Beijing’s heightened attention on those restrictions, which include a range of controls targeting China’s access to high-end, dual-use American technology, were reflected in Xi’s comments to Biden.
“If (the US) is adamant on containing China’s hi-tech development and depriving China of its legitimate right to development, China is not going to sit back and watch,” Xi said, according to China’s readout.
On Taiwan, which is a key point of friction between the two countries, Xi called the issue the “first red line” in the relationship and urged the US to act in accordance “with President Biden’s commitment of not supporting ‘Taiwan independence,’” the readout said.
China’s ruling Communist Party claims the self-ruling democracy as its own territory and has vowed to “reunify” with it, by force if necessary.
The conversation Tuesday was meant to serve as a “check in” on the progress of areas discussed by the two leaders during their meeting last year, including the re-establishment of the two countries’ military-to-military communications and their pledge to work together to curb fentanyl production, a US senior administration official told reporters ahead of the call.
