US President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping (習近平), yesterday spoke by telephone on mounting tensions over Taiwan, a festering trade dispute and their bid to keep the superpower rivalry in check.
In Taipei, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it is closely following all top-level US-China communications, with ministry spokeswoman Joanne Ou (歐江安) saying that Washington had informed Taiwan of the call between Biden and Xi in advance.
The White House said the phone call started at 8:33am in Washington.
Photo: AFP
A statement would be issued after the call ended, a spokesman said.
While this was Biden’s fifth conversation with Xi since becoming president a year and a half ago, it was getting hard to mask deepening mistrust between the two countries.
Already stuck in a trade war, Beijing and Washington increasingly risk open conflict over Taiwan, with little sign of resolution on either front.
“Tensions over China’s aggressive, coercive behavior in the Indo-Pacific” will be high on the agenda, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said.
The latest flashpoint is a possible trip by US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, which has spurred grim warnings from Beijing that Washington would “bear the consequences.”
The dispute around Pelosi’s trip is the tip of an iceberg, with US officials fearing that Xi is mulling use of force to impose control over Taiwan.
Once considered unlikely, an invasion, or lesser form of military action, is increasingly seen by China watchers as possible — perhaps even timed to boost Xi’s prestige when he moves later this year into a third term.
According to the White House, Biden’s chief goal is to establish “guardrails” for the two superpowers.
This is meant to ensure that while they sharply disagree on democracy, and are increasingly rivals on the geopolitical stage, they can avoid open conflict.
“He wants to make sure that the lines of communication with President Xi on all the issues, whether they’re issues again that we agree on or issues where we have significant difficulty with — that they can still pick up the phone and talk to one another candidly,” Kirby said.
Where to place the guardrails, is challenging amid so many unresolved disputes, including a simmering trade war begun under former US president Donald Trump.
Asked whether Biden could lift some of the 25 percent import duties placed on billions of US dollars of Chinese products by Trump, Kirby said there was still no decision.
“We do believe ... that the tariffs that were put in place by his predecessor were poorly designed. We believe that they’ve increased costs for American families and small businesses, as well as ranchers. And that’s, you know, without actually addressing some of China’s harmful trade practices,” Kirby said.
However, “I don’t have any decision to speak to with respect to tariffs by the president. He’s working this out,” he said.
Additional reporting by Lu Yi-hsuan
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