Team News Riveting
Jakarta, November 14
President Joe Biden objected to China’s “coercive and increasingly aggressive actions” toward Taiwan and raised human rights concerns about Beijing’s conduct in Xinjiang, Tibet, and Hong Kong during his first in-person meeting on Monday with President Xi Jinping, the White House said.
Xi and Biden greeted each other with a handshake at a luxury resort hotel in Indonesia, where they are attending the G20 summit of large economies.
In a statement on the roughly three-hour session, the White House said Biden told Xi that the U.S would “continue to compete vigorously” with China but that “competition should not veer into conflict.” The meeting came as the superpowers aimed to “manage” differences between them as they compete for global influence amid increasing economic and security tensions.
“As the leaders of our two nations, we share responsibility, in my view, to show that China and the United States can manage our differences, prevent competition from becoming anything ever near conflict, and to find ways to work together on urgent global issues that require our mutual cooperation,” Biden said to open the meeting.
Xi called on Biden to “chart the right course” and “elevate the relationship” between China and the US.
Biden and Xi also agreed that “a nuclear war should never be fought” and can’t be won, “and underscored their opposition to the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine,” the White House said. That was a reference to Russian officials’ thinly-veiled threats to use atomic weapons as its nearly nine-month invasion of Ukraine has faltered.
