US President Joe Biden yesterday said he would seek to establish “red lines” in the US’ fraught relations with Beijing when he holds high-stakes talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平).
Biden said he goes into today’s encounter on the sidelines of a G20 summit in Indonesia in a better position after his Democratic Party’s unexpected success in the midterm elections.
“I feel good and I’m looking forward to the next couple years,” he said. “I know I’m coming in stronger.”
Photo: Reuters
Washington and Beijing are at loggerheads over issues ranging from trade to human rights in China’s Xinjiang region and the status of Taiwan.
Biden said he expected candid talks with Xi.
“I know Xi Jinping, he knows me,” he said, adding that they have always had “straightforward discussions.”
The two men have known each other for more than a decade, since Biden’s time as US vice president, but today will see them meet face-to-face for the first time in their current roles.
“We have very little misunderstanding. We just got to figure out what the red lines are,” Biden said.
White House officials have said Biden would push China to use its influence to rein in North Korea after a record-breaking spate of missile tests sent fears soaring that the reclusive regime would soon carry out its seventh nuclear test.
China is Pyongyang’s main ally and US officials said that, while Biden would not make demands, he would warn Xi that further missile and nuclear build-up would mean the US boosting its military presence in the region — something Beijing bitterly opposes.
“North Korea represents a threat not just to the United States, not just to [South Korea] and Japan, but to peace and stability across the entire region,” US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told reporters.
Biden flew to Phnom Penh from the COP27 climate conference as part of US efforts to boost its influence in Southeast Asia as a counter to China.
Biden yesterday told leaders at the ASEAN summit there — including Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (李克強) — that the US would speak out against Beijing’s rights abuses, the White House said in a news release.
A day earlier Biden took a veiled swipe at Beijing.
He said the US would work with ASEAN to “defend against the significant threats to rules-based order and threats to the rule of law.”
While the US president did not refer to China by name, Washington has long criticized what it says are Beijing’s efforts to undermine international norms on everything from intellectual property to human rights.
Despite US-China tensions Biden and Li clinked glasses together in a toast at a gala dinner on Saturday night, where they were seated on either side of the host, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen.
UNITED: The premier said Trump’s tariff comments provided a great opportunity for the private and public sectors to come together to maintain the nation’s chip advantage The government is considering ways to assist the nation’s semiconductor industry or hosting collaborative projects with the private sector after US President Donald Trump threatened to impose a 100 percent tariff on chips exported to the US, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said yesterday. Trump on Monday told Republican members of the US Congress about plans to impose sweeping tariffs on semiconductors, steel, aluminum, copper and pharmaceuticals “in the very near future.” “It’s time for the United States to return to the system that made us richer and more powerful than ever before,” Trump said at the Republican Issues Conference in Miami, Florida. “They
GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY: Taiwan must capitalize on the shock waves DeepSeek has sent through US markets to show it is a tech partner of Washington, a researcher said China’s reported breakthrough in artificial intelligence (AI) would prompt the US to seek a stronger alliance with Taiwan and Japan to secure its technological superiority, a Taiwanese researcher said yesterday. The launch of low-cost AI model DeepSeek (深度求索) on Monday sent US tech stocks tumbling, with chipmaker Nvidia Corp losing 16 percent of its value and the NASDAQ falling 612.46 points, or 3.07 percent, to close at 19,341.84 points. On the same day, the Philadelphia Stock Exchange Semiconductor Sector index dropped 488.7 points, or 9.15 percent, to close at 4,853.24 points. The launch of the Chinese chatbot proves that a competitor can
TAIWAN DEFENSE: The initiative would involve integrating various systems in a fast-paced manner through the use of common software to obstruct a Chinese invasion The first tranche of the US Navy’s “Replicator” initiative aimed at obstructing a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would be ready by August, a US Naval Institute (USNI) News report on Tuesday said. The initiative is part of a larger defense strategy for Taiwan, and would involve launching thousands of uncrewed submarines, surface vessels and aerial vehicles around Taiwan to buy the nation and its partners time to assemble a response. The plan was first made public by the Washington Post in June last year, when it cited comments by US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue
Taiwanese actress Barbie Hsu (徐熙媛) has died of pneumonia at the age of 48 while on a trip to Japan, where she contracted influenza during the Lunar New Year holiday, her sister confirmed today through an agent. "Our whole family came to Japan for a trip, and my dearest and most kindhearted sister Barbie Hsu died of influenza-induced pneumonia and unfortunately left us," Hsu's sister and talk show hostess Dee Hsu (徐熙娣) said. "I was grateful to be her sister in this life and that we got to care for and spend time with each other. I will always be grateful to
RSS