On Wednesday, Joe Biden made his first call as president with Xi Jinping, pressing the Chinese leader on Beijing’s trade and crackdown on democracy activists in Hong Kong, as well as other human rights issues.
The two leaders spoke just hours after Biden announced plans for a Pentagon task force to review the US national security strategy in China. and after the new US president announced that he was imposing sanctions against the military regime in Myanmar after this month’s coup in the Southeast Asian country.
A White House statement said Biden raised concerns about Beijing’s “coercive and unfair economic practices”. Biden also put pressure on Xi over Hong Kong, human rights violations against Uighurs and ethnic minorities in western Xinjiang province, and his actions against Taiwan.
“I told him that I will work with China when it benefits the American people,” Biden posted on Twitter after the call.
Chinese state broadcaster CCTV gave a more positive tone to the conversation, saying Xi acknowledged that the two sides have their differences and that these differences must be managed, but called for general cooperation.
CCTV said Xi reacted against Biden’s concerns in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Xinjiang, saying the issues were China’s internal affairs and related to Chinese sovereignty. He warned: “The United States must respect China’s central interests and act with caution.”
Biden, who had dealt with the Chinese leader when he served as vice president of Barack Obama, used his first three weeks at the White House to make several calls to other leaders in the Indo-Pacific region. He tried to send the message that he would take a radically different approach to China than former President Donald Trump, who placed trade and economic issues above all in U.S.-China relations.
With Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga at the end of last month, Biden highlighted the United States’ commitment to protecting the Senkaku Islands, a group of uninhabited islets administered by Tokyo but claimed by Beijing. In his liaison with India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Biden emphasized the need for “close cooperation to promote a free and open Indo-Pacific”. And in his liaison with Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison last week, the president stressed that the two nations’ alliance is essential for stability in the region, the White House said.
Biden’s top advisers have repeatedly heard from his Asia Pacific counterparts that they have been discouraged by Trump’s often sharp rhetoric directed at the allies, conversations about lowering troop levels in South Korea and strange interactions with the North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, according to a senior government official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private calls.
Allies in the region have made it clear that they want a more determined and firm approach to future confrontations, according to the official.
To that end, Biden and other senior management officials took care in their initial interactions with their colleagues to look at the long game in restoring relationships.
Biden used Wednesday’s appeal to raise concerns about Beijing’s crackdown on activists in Hong Kong and its policies that affect Muslims and ethnic minorities in Xinjiang. In the final hours of the Trump administration, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared that the Chinese Communist Party committed crimes against humanity against predominantly Muslim Uighurs and other minority groups.
China has denied any abuse and says the measures taken are necessary to combat terrorism and a separatist movement.
The White House also said that Biden made clear his concern about Beijing’s increasingly “assertive” action with Taiwan. Beijing claims total sovereignty over Taiwan, although the two sides have been governed separately for more than seven decades.
Days after Biden’s presidency, China dispatched warplanes near the island. The US Navy, in turn, last week sent a missile destroyer guided by the waterway that separates China from Taiwan.
One area where Biden does not seem ready to move quickly is the end of Trump’s trade war with China, which has generated tariffs on steel, aluminum and other products.
Biden plans to leave the tariffs in place while his government conducts a thorough review of trade policy. Government officials noted that the president is still awaiting confirmation of his nominee for U.S. trade representative, Katherine Tai, and his choice of secretary of commerce, Gina Raimondo. Both are expected to play important roles in helping to shape China’s trade policy.
Government officials say Biden also wants to consult with allies in Asia and Europe before making tariff decisions.
Biden and Xi know each other well and had frank conversations.
Biden received the then Chinese Vice President Xi during his 2012 visit to the United States. Biden used this visit to get a reading of Xi and went straight on at times, even raising concerns about Chinese intellectual property theft and human rights abuses during a lunch toast.
The following year, when Biden visited China, he publicly criticized Beijing for refusing to say it would renew visas for American journalists and for blocking US-based news sites.
Biden said he believes there are areas in which the U.S. and China can work together, how to deal with climate change and prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons. But ultimately, Biden said recently, he expects the US-China relationship to be “extreme competition” in the years to come.
On Thursday, China’s state broadcaster said that Xi told Biden: “You said that America’s biggest highlight is the possibility. I hope that this type of possibility will develop in order to improve relations between the two countries ”.
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Associated Press writer Huizhong Wu in Taipei, Taiwan contributed to this report.