daniel chigunwe
BEIJING. — China yesterday welcomed a virtual meeting between President Xi Jinping and US President Joe Biden as raising hopes for better relations, while the US was more muted on the talks as the world’s two biggest powers sought to ratchet down more than a year of tensions.
The leaders appeared to put aside the language of acrimony in their first formal meeting since Biden took office. President Xi welcomed the US leader as his “old friend,” and Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said the exchange was candid and constructive.
“If China-US relations cannot return to the past, they should face the future,” Zhao said, calling the meeting “conducive to increasing positive expectations for US-China relations.”
However, both sides held firm to their positions on the issues that divide Washington and Beijing, with President Xi warning that the US and Taiwan were playing with fire over the self-governing island that China claims.
The two nations were aiming to end a sharp deterioration in relations that accelerated under former US president Donald Trump and had festered since Mr Biden became president in January.
The meeting, which lasted a longer-than-expected three and a half hours, was the first of its kind between the two leaders since Biden took office in January. .
Both Mr Biden and President Xi seemed determined to lower the temperature in what for both sides is their most significant — and frequently turbulent — relationship on the global stage.
“As I’ve said before, it seems to me our responsibility as leaders of China and the United States is to ensure that the competition between our countries does not veer into conflict, whether intended or unintended,” Biden told Xi at the start of the meeting. “Just simple, straightforward competition.”
Still, White House officials said the two leaders had a substantive exchange.
President Xi greeted the US president as his “old friend” and echoed Mr Biden’s cordial tone in his own opening remarks, saying, “China and the United States need to increase communication and cooperation.”
The US president was joined in the Roosevelt Room for the video call by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and a handful of aides. President Xi, for his part, was accompanied in the East Hall of the Great Hall of the People by communist party director Ding Xuexiang and a number of advisers.
President Xi held a tough line on Taiwan, which Chinese officials had signalled would be a top issue for them at the talks. Tensions have heightened as the Chinese military has dispatched an increasing number of fighter jets near the island, which Beijing considers part of its territory.
The high-level diplomacy had a touch of pandemic Zoom meeting informality as the two leaders waved to each other once they saw one another on the screen. – Agencies
Online Reporter