President Biden spoke on Wednesday to Chinese President Xi Jinping for the first time since taking office.
The two world leaders spoke by phone, with Biden raising several concerns about the economy and human rights.
“President Biden highlighted his fundamental concerns about Beijing’s coercive and unfair economic practices, the repression in Hong Kong, human rights abuses in Xinjiang and the increasingly assertive actions in the region, including in relation to Taiwan,” said White House in a statement.
Biden and Xi also “exchanged views on combating the COVID-19 pandemic and the common challenges of global health security, climate change and preventing the proliferation of weapons,” the statement said.
The call on Wednesday was also the first time since March that a US president spoke to the Chinese leader.
The change in the US-China alliance represents one of the biggest foreign policy challenges for Biden’s presidency.
Under the command of predecessor Donald Trump, the United States applied high tariffs on Chinese products, criticized President Xi Jinping for the country’s incorrect treatment in the first cases of the coronavirus pandemic and condemned human rights abuses against Uighurs.
In an interview with CBS News over the weekend, Biden acknowledged that China is a growing rival to the U.S. in terms of economic and military power, but said he would handle things differently than Trump.
“There will be extreme competition and I will not do it the way he knows it,” said Biden of Jinping.
“I’m not going to do it the way Trump did it. We will focus on international traffic rules, ”he continued, insisting that there was no need for conflict between the two countries.
Although communist Beijing described the new Biden government as “a new window of hope” for relations with the United States, the relationship got off to a rough start.
China’s Foreign Ministry rejected calls by Secretary of State Antony Blinken to work together on climate change after he said he agreed that the Chinese government’s treatment of Uighur Muslims amounts to “genocide”.
“It is impossible to ask for China’s support in global affairs and at the same time to interfere in its internal affairs and undermine its interests,” said a statement.