[ad_1]
WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden spoke by phone with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Wednesday evening for the first time since taking office, the White House said.
The White House said in a statement that Biden had raised “fundamental concerns” about Beijing’s “coercive and unfair economic practices, the crackdown in Hong Kong, human rights violations in Xinjiang and the growing actions. more assertive in the region, including towards Taiwan “.
The statement said the leaders also discussed the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic and “the common challenges of global health security, climate change and preventing the proliferation of weapons.”
Officials said Biden also plans to express his hope that the two leaders could cooperate on issues such as nuclear non-proliferation and climate change.
Biden does not currently plan to lift tariffs on China that were imposed by the Trump administration, senior administration officials said ahead of the call, and he is unlikely to reduce attendance. US military in Asia, as former President Donald Trump threatened to do. .
The call between the leaders of the world’s two largest economies, coming three weeks after Biden’s inauguration, follows a review of the fundamentals of US policy toward China during the Trump administration and to extensive consultation with U.S. allies, officials said. One described Biden as being “in a strong position” to have a substantive conversation with Xi.
Officials said the call was to signal a new US strategy that maintains a fundamental tenet of the Trump administration’s policy – intense competition – but takes a radically different approach.
“We have looked at what the Trump administration has been doing for four years and found merit in the basic proposition of intense strategic competition with China and the need for us to engage in it vigorously, systematically, through every instrument of our government and every instrument of our power, ”said a senior administration official. “But we found deep problems with the way the Trump administration conducted this competition.”
Officials said that a difference in Biden’s approach will be the focus on engaging with U.S. allies, both in Europe and in the Asia-Pacific region. Biden, for example, is expected to participate in international forums for countries in the region, such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, and the Asia Summit. from the East, although it is not clear whether his appearances would be virtual given the pandemic. Former President Barack Obama regularly attended the ASEAN summit, for example, but Trump skipped it after his first year in office.
A second senior administration official said American partners in Asia had expressed concerns about recent US actions, including the unpredictability of the Trump administration and its “strange interactions with North Korea.”
Officials also insisted that Biden’s Chinese policy is not a continuation of Trump’s, saying he is not criticizing the harshness of Trump’s approach, but rather “doing it alone. while fighting our allies and partners “.
The China policy review continues in several areas, including a Defense Department effort announced on Wednesday and a study of the Trump administration’s tariffs.
Biden will decide on tariffs after extensive consultation with agencies in his administration and with US partners in Asia and Europe – which a senior administration official said “will take time.”
“There will be changes in trade policy towards China,” the official said. “And in the meantime, we are not lifting the tariffs.”
One of the policies the administration plans to pursue is to further restrict China’s access to certain types of sensitive technologies. Officials said new restrictions on those exports would be coordinated with U.S. allies.
Officials said Biden did not intend to raise the issue of hosting the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing.
Biden first got to know Xi as vice president at a time when it was clear Xi was taking the presidency. A senior administration official said Biden made the “practical, lucid, lucid” phone call.
“He has obviously spent a lot of time with Xi Jinping over the years,” one of the top administration officials said. “The two leaders know each other very well.”
The strategy Biden plans to adopt, the official said, “will not unfold over days, weeks or even months. It will unfold over years.”
“That doesn’t mean there isn’t an emergency,” the official said. “There is urgency, and we are acting urgently. But it also means that we have to stick to it, and we have to play the long game.”
[ad_2]
Source link