Asia-Pacific

China’s Jinping warns Biden not to ‘play with fire’ over Taiwan

Presidents hold a two-hour phone call amid tensions over House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s potential trip to island next month

Taiwanese soldiers disembark from an amphibious assault vehicle during a landing drill in Pingtung, Taiwan, on July 28th, 2022. Photograph: EPA

Vincent Ni
Joan E Greve in Washington
Fri Jul 29 2022 - 06:35

The Chinese president has warned Joe Biden against “playing with fire” over Taiwan in a highly anticipated phone call that lasted more than two hours on Thursday as tensions remain high over the House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s potential trip to the island next month.

“Those who play with fire will be perished by it. It is hoped that the US will be clear-eyed about this,” Xi Jinping said, according to a Chinese statement. He also urged the United States to implement the three joint communiques that serve as the foundation for relations between the two countries “both in word and in deed”.

Mr Xi vowed “resolutely” to safeguard China’s national sovereignty and territorial integrity and said this is “the firm will of more than 1.4 billion Chinese people”.

This is not the first time Mr Xi has used such language to dissuade Washington from publicly supporting Taipei. Last November, he also warned the US president in a virtual summit that China was prepared to take “decisive measures” if Taiwan makes any moves towards independence that cross Beijing’s red lines.

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In response to Mr Xi’s comment on Taiwan, Mr Biden reiterated Washington’s policy and said it had not changed and that “the United States strongly opposes unilateral efforts to change the status quo or undermine peace and stability across the Taiwan strait”, according to the US statement, which was much shorter than the Chinese one.

The White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, would not comment on China’s statement following the call, simply saying that the two leaders had “a direct, straightforward conversation”.

“This is something you hear from the president all the time, the importance of having leader to leader conversations,” Ms Jean-Pierre told reporters at her Thursday press briefing. “But again, I’m not going to speak to or characterise” the Chinese readout of the call.

Noting that Mr Biden and Mr Xi have known each other for about four decades, she said the call had been “in the works for quite some time”. Mr Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, proposed the conversation in June when he met his Chinese counterpart “as part of our efforts to maintain open lines of communication and manage the relationship responsibly”, Ms Jean-Pierre said.

The men agreed to schedule their first in-person summit as leaders, according to US officials, but no detail was given on the timing or location.

Taiwan’s foreign ministry said on Friday that it would continue to deepen its close security partnership with the United States.

Last week, it was reported that Ms Pelosi was planning a trip to Taiwan, although it has still not been confirmed. Mr Biden cautioned against the trip, and Beijing threatened Washington with serious consequences if it went ahead. A visit by the House speaker would be a dramatic, though not unprecedented, show of US support for the island.

Taiwan has complained of increased Chinese military manoeuvres over the past two years to try to force it to accept Beijing’s sovereignty.

On Thursday, Taiwan’s military said it fired flares to warn away a drone that “glanced by” a strategically located and heavily fortified island close to the Chinese coast that was possibly investigating its defences. A senior Taiwanese official said it was a Chinese drone, probably one of China’s new CSC-005 drones. China has not commented.

China’s spokeswoman, Hua Chunying, described the leaders’ phone exchange as “candid”. It is the two leaders’ fifth conversation since February 2021, when Mr Biden became US president.

During the call, Mr Xi said Washington’s definition of Beijing as its primary rival and most serious long-term challenge was “misperceiving China-US relations and misreading China’s development, and would mislead the people of the two countries and the international community”, according to Ms Hua.

Chinese state media said Mr Xi told Mr Biden the US should abide by the “one-China principle” — which the US calls the “one-China policy” — and stressed China firmly opposed Taiwanese independence and interference of external forces.

The two leaders also discussed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and bilateral trade, global supply chains, and the ongoing food and energy crises, according to the Chinese statement. <r Biden previously said he was still considering lifting some of the tariffs on Chinese imports in an attempt to ease the domestic cost of living crisis. — additional reporting: Reuters

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