Washington:
US President Joe Biden talked with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping for the very first time in seven months Thursday, urging they assure that “competition” involving the two powers does not turn out to be “conflict,” the White House mentioned.
During the contact, Biden’s message was that the United States desires to assure “the dynamic remains competitive and that we don’t have any situation in the future where we veer into unintended conflict,” a senior US administration official told reporters.
This was the leaders’ very first contact due to the fact February, when they talked for two hours, shortly immediately after Biden took more than from Donald Trump.
US-China relations went into a nosedive below Trump, who launched a trade war involving the world’s quantity one and two economies. Biden’s administration, whilst urging multilateralism and an finish to Trump’s “America first” ideology, has kept trade tariffs in spot and remains hard on other contentious regions of the relationship with Beijing.
However, the White House signaled that the diplomatic impasse is unsustainable and potentially harmful, requiring intervention by the leaders in Thursday’s contact.
“We welcome stiff competition but we don’t want that competition to veer into conflict,” the official, who spoke on situation of anonymity, told reporters.
The purpose of the contact was to set out “guardrails” so that the relationship can be “managed responsibly.”
Lower level attempts to engage with China have not gone properly, specially at an angry March exchange involving Secretary of State Antony Blinken and prime Chinese officials when they met in Anchorage, Alaska.
“We have not been very satisfied with our interlocutors’ behavior,” the senior official told reporters.
Accusing the Chinese of getting largely “unwilling to engage in serious or substantive” talks, the official mentioned “we don’t believe that that is how responsible nations act, especially given the global importance of the US-China competition.”
Faced with the impasse, “President Biden understood the importance of engaging President Xi directly,” the official mentioned.
According to a readout from the White House immediately after the contact, Biden and Xi had a “discussed areas where our interests converge, and areas where our interests, values, and perspectives diverge.”
No ‘breakthroughs’
Thursday’s contact focused on “broad and strategic” difficulties, with no concrete choices anticipated on outstanding difficulties or setting up a very first Biden-Xi summit, the official mentioned.
The list of disagreements involving Washington and Beijing is lengthy and increasing.
Beyond trade, with the White House official complaining of “China’s unfair and coercive trade practices,” there is deepening tension more than China’s claims to Taiwan and various islands in the South China Sea.
There are regions exactly where the two powers also uncover themselves possessing to cooperate or at least coordinate, such as on North Korea’s nuclear weapons plan and the climate crisis.
But Thursday’s contact was “not about finding some sort of breakthrough agreements,” the senior official mentioned.
It was “about keeping the channels of communication open” and ending preceding cycles exactly where the relationship blew hot and cold.
“Our goal is, is to really reach a steady state of affairs between the United States and China,” the official mentioned.
Biden, who constructed a close relationship with Xi whilst serving as vice president below Barack Obama, clearly has belief in his powers of private speak to when it comes to diplomacy.
He went into the contact hoping to bridge the increasing US-China divide and “have that sort of discussion. They certainly did in their first phone call in February,” the senior administration official mentioned.
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