The American president was pleased, on Wednesday, to be able to speak with his Chinese counterpart “directly and immediately” in the event of a crisis, despite having considered Xi Jinping “a dictator.”
At the end of a meeting between the two in California, Joe Biden stated that the two leaders agreed to “keep the lines of communication open.”
“We agreed that each of us could pick up the phone, call directly and be heard immediately,” Biden said at the press conference at the end of the meeting.
The American president admitted that the negotiations with his Chinese counterpart were “one of the most constructive and productive discussions” they have ever had.
Asked if he trusts Xi, Biden said, “Trust, but verify, as the old saying goes. That’s my position,” describing the relationship between the two powers as competitive.
“I know the man, I know his modus operandi, I have looked him in the eyes, we have differences. He has a different vision than mine on many things, but he has been honest. It is not my intention to say that he is good, better, indifferent, simply straight,” he considered.
However, despite the apparent evolution of the relationship between them, after the meeting that lasted more than four hours, Biden continued to consider his Chinese counterpart “a dictator.”
At the end of the press conference, a journalist asked the head of state if he still considered Xi “a dictator.”
“He is a dictator in the sense that he is a man who leads a country that is communist,” Biden said, adding that the Chinese government “is totally different” from the American one.
At a fundraising event for the 2024 election campaign last June, Biden called Xi a “dictator” for the first time, causing a stir in the Asian giant.
At Wednesday’s meeting on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, the two leaders agreed to work together to reduce illicit fentanyl production, resume military communications, begin an intergovernmental dialogue on artificial intelligence and add direct flights between Both countries. .
On the controversial issue of Taiwan, a source of tension between Washington and Beijing, Biden said he made it “clear that he will not expect any interference” in Taiwan’s next presidential election, scheduled for January.
The President highlighted his commitment to the “One China” policy.
“I reiterated what I have said since I became president, and what all previous presidents have said recently: We maintain an agreement that there is a ‘One China’ policy,” Biden said, adding that “that will not change.”
According to the White House, Joe Biden also took the opportunity to express concern about China’s “human rights abuses” in Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong.
The two leaders divided their time together between a meeting, a working lunch and a brief walk through a bucolic rural estate on the outskirts of San Francisco.
“I spent more time with President Xi than with any other international leader,” noted Joe Biden.
When the two were vice presidents, they spent 68 hours face-to-face getting to know each other, he recalled.
At the press conference, Joe Biden also addressed the conflict between Israel and Hamas, accusing the Islamist group of committing a “war crime” by operating what the United States and Israel claim was a command center at Al-Shifa hospital. , in Gaza.
The US president said he discussed the dangerous situation at the hospital, Gaza’s largest, during the meeting with Xi Jinping.
“There is a circumstance in which the first war crime is being committed by Hamas, by having its headquarters and its army hidden under a hospital. And that is a fact. That is what happened,” he told reporters.
Biden affirmed that, at the moment, no deadline has been set to ask the Israeli army to cease the land invasion of the Palestinian enclave and insisted that the end of the conflict involves betting on the “two-state solution”, one Jewish and the other. another Arab, “realistically.”
The US head of state was also “relatively optimistic” about the upcoming release of the hostages held by Hamas since October 7 and said he had asked Israel to be “extremely careful” in carrying out operations at the main hospital. from Gaza.
On October 7, Hamas launched a surprise attack on southern Israel with the launch of thousands of rockets and the incursion of armed militiamen.
In response, Israel declared war on Hamas, which has controlled the Gaza Strip since 2007 and is classified as terrorist by the EU and the United States, bombed several of the group’s infrastructure in Gaza and imposed a total siege on the territory, cutting off water. . supplies, fuel and electricity.
Israeli bombings from air, land and sea caused more than 11,000 deaths, mostly civilians, in the Gaza Strip, according to Hamas data.
Source: TSF
