Chinese President Xi Jinping warned his US counterpart Joe Biden on Monday not to “cross the red line” in Taiwan during their bilateral meeting in Indonesia, Chinese diplomacy announced.
“The Taiwan issue is at the core of China’s core interests, the foundation of the political foundation of Sino-US relations, and is the first red line not to be crossed in Sino-US relations,” Xi told Biden, according to the ministry. of Foreign Relations of China.
“Solving the Taiwan problem depends on the Chinese,” warned the Chinese leader, quoted by the French news agency AFP.
The two presidents met for more than three hours on the Indonesian island of Bali, on the sidelines of the G20 summit, the group of the most developed and emerging economies.
Xi said that “it is the common aspiration of the Chinese people to achieve national reunification and safeguard their territorial integrity,” according to the Spanish news agency EFE.
“Anyone who seeks to separate Taiwan from China is violating China’s fundamental interests and the Chinese people will never allow it. We hope to see peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait, but peace and Taiwan’s ‘independence’ are irreconcilable,” he warned. .
The Chinese leader said he hoped Washington would “honor its word” and “respect the one-China policy and the three joint communiques signed” by the two sides.
“They are the basis of relations between our two countries,” he insisted.
Xi recalled that Biden commented “on numerous occasions” that the United States “does not support the independence of the island” and has no intention of “using Taiwan as an instrument to gain advantage in its competition with China or to contain China.”
“We hope that the United States will keep its promises and really put all of this into practice,” he added.
The US presidency said that at the meeting, Biden criticized China’s “coercive and increasingly aggressive actions” towards Taiwan.
“I don’t think there is an imminent attempt by China to invade Taiwan,” Biden said, however, at a news conference he held in Bali after his meeting with Xi.
The island of Taiwan has been governed autonomously since 1949, when nationalist forces took refuge there after being defeated in the civil war by the Chinese Communist Party, which has been in power in Beijing ever since.
The People’s Republic of China claims sovereignty over the island, which it considers a rogue province, and threatens to invade the island if Taipei declares its independence.
Tensions between Beijing and Washington escalated in August following a trip to the island by the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi.
China responded to the visit with the largest military exercises on the island in decades and trade sanctions against Taipei.
The United States is Taiwan’s main arms supplier and has declared that it will side with Taipei in the event of a military conflict with China.
China began the so-called homeland reunification process in 1997, with the recovery of sovereignty over the British colony of Hong Kong, which was followed two years later by the transfer of the Portuguese administration of Macao to Beijing.
The meeting in Bali between Xi and Biden was the first face-to-face meeting between the two leaders since they were president, despite having previously met when both were vice presidents.
After Biden arrived at the White House in January 2021, they spoke on the phone several times, but the covid-19 pandemic prevented face-to-face meetings.
Source: TSF
