White House on Saturday (Jan 27) released a statement saying that the United States and China were working on arranging another call between President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping.
It released a statement saying that both sides were pursuing “additional high-level diplomacy, including through a call between President Biden and President Xi.”
This came as US and China said that their top diplomats, Wang Yi and US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan held “candid, substantive” talks in Thailand’s capital city Bangkok.
The issue of Taiwan central was also discussed during the talks after the recent elections there, according to the official statement.
Wang and Sullivan “had candid, substantive and fruitful strategic communication on implementing the consensus reached at the San Francisco meeting… and on properly handling important and sensitive issues in China-US relations”, a statement on China’s foreign ministry website released Saturday evening said.
Reiterating China’s description of the official discussions, the White House added that the high-level talks were “part of the effort to maintain open lines of communication and responsibly manage competition in the relationship” between both countries.
‘Taiwan is part of China’, says Wang
During the talks, as per the foreign ministry, Wang stressed that Taiwan was “China’s internal affair and the regional election in Taiwan cannot change the basic reality that Taiwan is part of China”.
“The biggest risk to peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait is the so-called ‘Taiwan independence’ movement. The biggest challenge to China-US relations is also the ‘Taiwan independence’ movement,” it added.
Sullivan, however, “underscored the importance of maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait”, according to the White House.
US asks China to press Iran on Red Sea shipping attacks
A senior White House official said that during the talks the United States, also asked China to press Iran to bring about an end to the attacks on Red Sea shipping carried out by Yemen’s Houthi rebel group.
Sullivan in his discussion with Wang “raised the importance of Beijing using (its) leverage with Iran to call for an end, and bring an end” to the attacks by the Iranian-backed rebels, the official told the reporters.
(With inputs from agencies)
