In a virtual meeting aimed at establishing “guardrails” to prevent opposing superpowers from clashing. Presidents Joe Biden of the United States and Xi Jinping of China both issued harsh warnings about Taiwan’s future.
A senior US source told reporters that the video-link conference, which took place late Monday in Washington and early Tuesday in Beijing, lasted “longer than intended.”
While the summit’s purpose was to calm an increasingly tense relationship between the world’s two largest economies and geopolitical rivals, tensions over Taiwan, a self-governing democracy claimed by China.
After the talks, Chinese official media said that Xi warned Biden that advocating Taiwanese independence would be “playing with fire.”
“Some Americans want to “manage China by using Taiwan.” This tendency is extremely dangerous, since it is similar to playing with fire, and those who do so would be burned “Xinhua news agency cited him as stating this.
In regards to Taiwan, President Biden stated that the US “strongly opposes unilateral moves to disrupt the status quo or threaten peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait,” according to a White House statement.
The statement reaffirmed US policy, which does not recognize Taiwan’s independence but supports the island’s defense.
The White House stressed that it did not expect or receive any specific changes as a result of the conference. Rather, the idea was to build on previous interactions with Xi in order to manage a relationship that was far too important to fail.
Biden said it was their “duty as leaders of China and the United States to ensure that the competitiveness between our countries does not turn into confrontation, whether deliberate or unintended,” as he spoke to Xi on a television screen from the White House.
“Some common sense guardrails need to be established,” he stated.
Instead, “clear, straightforward competition” should be the goal, according to Biden, who promised a “transparent” dialogue.
