President Biden affirms importance of Taiwan Strait peace, security in call with Xi

FORUM Staff

United States President Joe Biden raised Indo-Pacific security concerns during his recent telephone conversation with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) General Secretary Xi Jinping, including maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait and the importance of freedom of navigation in the South China Sea.

During the nearly two-hour conversation, President Biden also “emphasized the U.S.’s enduring commitment to the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” according to John Kirby, the White House national security communications advisor.

Kirby described the April 2, 2024, talks between President Biden and Xi as “candid and constructive, very professional, business like” and arranged around national security priorities. It was the leaders’ first conversation since their November 2023 summit in California, where they agreed to resume bilateral military communications, among other measures. They “thought that now, a few months later, this was a good time to check in with one another to see how that’s going and discuss the future,” Kirby said.

The call was an opportunity for President Biden to reaffirm the U.S.’s longtime “One China” policy, which recognizes Beijing as the PRC’s sole legal government but does not take a position on Taiwan’s status. The policy is guided by the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, which stipulates U.S. support for Taiwan to defend itself and is intended to deter the CCP from invading the self-governed island it claims as its territory.

The CCP has been increasing its gray-zone tactics to bully and coerce Taiwan. U.S. Navy Adm. John Aquilino, Commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, recently said that Beijing’s People’s Liberation Army would be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027.

After the April talks, Taiwan’s Foreign Affairs Ministry thanked President Biden for publicly declaring the U.S.’s resolute support for peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait amid the PRC’s intensifying provocations, the Taipei Times newspaper reported.

President Biden also raised concerns over the PRC’s destabilizing actions in the South China Sea, where Chinese coast guard ships have rammed, blocked and fired water cannons at Philippine vessels conducting routine resupply missions to troops stationed at Second Thomas Shoal, which is within Manila’s exclusive economic zone.

Beijing claims almost the entire South China Sea, a global trade route, despite an international tribunal’s 2016 ruling that its territorial assertion has no legal basis.

President Biden also noted deep concern “about the PRC support for Russia’s war against Ukraine and its efforts to help Russia reconstitute its defense industrial base,” White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said.

Chinese entities have helped Russia evade international sanctions imposed after Moscow’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, including by shipping radar components to a Russian state-owned manufacturer for anti-aircraft missile systems, according to U.S. officials.

President Biden and Xi also discussed artificial intelligence, economy and trade, fentanyl interdiction, climate change, and election interference.

“We’ve been clear, consistently … about our concerns about our own election security and efforts by certain actors, including some from the PRC, to affect that,” Kirby said.

Kirby emphasized the importance of regular communication to effectively manage the nations’ relationship. “Both presidents agreed to pick up the phone and speak when needed,” he said.