Biden Holds 1st Call As President With China's Xi As Trade ...
After a two-hour phone call with his Chinese counterpart, President Biden made his case for domestic investment in infrastructure, clean energy and other sectors.
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17 hours ago ·
Biden Holds 1st Call As President With China's Xi As Trade, Defense Issues Loom President
Biden talked with his
Chinese counterpart after announcing a new Pentagon task force on China-related matters.
Excerpt:
"China-U.S. confrontation will definitely be a disaster for both countries and the world," Xi was quoted as saying. "The two countries should work together, meet each other half way... focus on cooperation, manage differences, and promote the healthy and stable development of China-U.S. relations."
Xi told Biden the two sides would have different views sometimes, but "the key is to respect each other, treat each other as equals, and properly manage and handle them in a constructive manner." He said Taiwan, Hong Kong and Xinjiang were internal matters, and the U.S. should "respect China's core interests and act cautiously."
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Timeline: The Unraveling Of U.S.-China Relations
Some merit in Trump approach
The Biden administration doesn't plan to reverse all of Trump's China policy, senior U.S. officials told reporters ahead of the leaders' call.
"We looked at what the Trump administration did over four years and found merit in the basic proposition of an intense strategic competition with China and the need for us to engage in that vigorously, systematically across every instrument of our government and every instrument of our power," one official said.
But Biden's team took issue with "the way in which the Trump administration went about that competition" particularly by eschewing traditional alliances and the traditional U.S. foreign policy focus on human rights and democracy.