Xi Jinping – Biden Phone Call: “Taiwan is a Red Line,” Yellen Soon in Beijing

United States President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping have had a lengthy telephone contact, trying to maintain a diplomatic thread in a global mess that seems to be growing increasingly tangled.

The conversation lasted more than an hour and a half and represented a consolidation of relations renewed at a face-to-face meeting held in November 2023 in San Francisco, with the last telephone conversation between the two leaders dating back to July 2022. Central to the discussion were the bilateral relationship between the United States and China, the importance of strengthening lines of communication, and responsible competition management, as well as a range of regional and global issues.

The meeting precedes future trips to China by Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, which US officials who covered the talks between Biden and Xi Jinping said would be an attempt at détente between the USA and China.

“Taiwan is a red line,” Xi Jinping explained, as reported by Xinhua News Agency. “In the face of the separatist activities of ‘Taiwan independence’ and their external encouragement and support, China will not remain inactive.” Thus, Xi Jinping urged Biden not to support “Taiwan’s independence” and felt that “the USA has taken a series of measures to suppress China’s trade and technological development and is adding more and more Chinese enterprises to its sanctions lists. This is not risk mitigation, but risk creation,” he commented. And all this for the sake of “stabilizing relations,” which, however, began with the San Francisco meeting and which must never recede. “Both sides should refrain from accidents or crossing the line to maintain the overall stability of the relationship.” Other “hot” topics for China are Hong Kong, human rights, and the South China Sea “problem.”

President Biden has expressed concern about Beijing’s military cooperation with Russia and China’s trade policies, which are seen as unfair and “non-market-oriented.” Another problem the US president emphasized was the attacks by the Houthis who “exacerbate tensions, instability, and trade flows.”

Then there was talk about the popular Chinese social network TikTok, which represents a potential security problem for users in the USA and which the government would therefore like to “nationalize,” as well as about cooperation to stop the disaster of fentanyl, a horrible synthetic drug that is spreading like wildfire in North America.

In short, there is a “freeze” on many positions, but at the same time, at least, the desire to talk to each other is preserved.