The president of China, Xi Jinping, and his American counterpart, Joe Biden, held a telephone conversation on Thursday in which Xi asked that the United States “abide by the principle of ‘one China'” , according to an official statement from the Chinese Foreign Ministry.
In recent days, tensions have grown between Washington and Beijing over the possible trip of the Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, to Taiwan.
During the virtual meeting, the first since the one they held last March, the Chinese president reiterated China’s opposition “to Taiwan’s independence” and “external interference.”
This week, a spokesman for the Chinese Army warned the United States that the forces of the Asian country “would not sit idly by” if the visit takes place and the Chinese Foreign Ministry has recently reiterated that China “would respond firmly”.
At the moment neither Nancy Pelosi nor the Taiwanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs have confirmed the trip, which would take place in August, according to US media.
During the call between the two leaders, which lasted more than two hours, the Chinese president warned his counterpart that “defining relations between the two countries from a competitive perspective is misleading and wrong.”
Xi expressed his hope that the two superpowers “keep communication on important issues such as macroeconomic policy coordination, maintaining the stability of industrial supply chains, and ensuring global energy and food security.”
In addition, the Chinese leader warned Biden: “The decoupling of supply chains will not help boost the US economy.”
Likewise, Xi recommended that both countries “work together” to “cool the hottest regional issues” and to “help the world get out of the covid-19 pandemic, stagnation and the risk of recession.”
Xi and Biden, who have not yet met in person since the latter’s arrival at the White House, described their dialogue as “frank and deep” and agreed to “maintain contact.”
The Chinese statement hardly offers details about what Biden said in the meeting, the second that has taken place between the two leaders since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a topic that was also discussed in the conversation this Thursday, although Beijing only explains that Xi Jinping “reiterated China’s position” on the matter.
Since the beginning of the war, China has maintained an ambiguous position during which it has called for respect for “the territorial integrity of all countries”, including Ukraine, and attention to the “legitimate concerns of all countries”, referring to Russia. .
Relations between the two countries began to deteriorate in 2018 when the then US president, Donald Trump, started a trade war with China that was later extended to fields such as technology or diplomacy.
In the last year, tensions have intensified in the Taiwan Strait as a result of the increase in incursions by Chinese planes into Taiwan’s self-defined aerial identification zone (ADIZ) and because the Taiwanese president, Tsai Ing-wen, admitted that the United States The United States has a military presence on the island, something that Beijing described as “a provocation”.
Taiwan, with which the US does not maintain official relations, is one of the main sources of conflict between China and the United States, mainly because Washington is the main supplier of weapons to the island and would be its greatest military ally in case of war conflict with the Asian giant.