New Delhi: China has warned the US against crossing the “red line” on Taiwan, asking it to refrain from sending “wrong signals” to the self-governing island it considers its own territory.
“The Taiwan issue is the first insurmountable red line in Sino-US relations,” said foreign minister Wang Yi Friday after a meeting with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
Though bilateral ties were “beginning to stabilise”, according to Wang, China’s displeasure was triggered afresh two days ago when the US announced its latest military package of $8.1 billion to Taiwan and other allies in the Indo-Pacific region to counter China.
In his meeting with Blinken, Wang underscored that the US needed to “abide by the One China principle”. He said America should stop sending the wrong signals to separatist forces about Taiwan’s “independence” in any way, and should earnestly honour President Joe Biden’s lack of support for Taiwanese independence and the “Two China” theory.
Blinken began his three-day tour to the country on 24 April from Shanghai before arriving at Beijing to meet with senior leaders including President Xi Jinping.
Local media quoted Xi as saying that China would like to see “a confident, open, prosperous and developing United States”. “We hope that the United States can also take a positive view of China’s development. Only when this fundamental problem is solved and the ‘first button’ is buttoned can China-US relations truly stabilise, get better, and move forward,” Xi said.
Blinken’s visit comes just days after Biden signed into law a piece of legislation that gives ByteDance, the Beijing-based company that owns TikTok — the popular social media application in the US – nine months to divest its ownership or see the application get banned across the country.
Biden has also called for further tariffs against Chinese steel imports and an investigation into the Chinese shipbuilding industry. There are fears in Washington D.C. of China dumping cheap exports across its markets as Beijing is using large government subsidy programmes to maintain its economic growth.
Before meeting his counterpart for a marathon five hours, Blinken said the US president had asked him to travel back to Beijing after the two presidents met in San Francisco last year. Biden’s brief, he remarked, was to “work on moving forward” on resuming cooperation on counternarcotics, and restarting military-to-military conversations.
In November 2023, Xi and Biden met in California where the two agreed to resume military-to-military communications and cooperation on combating the global trafficking of drugs, especially the synthetic drug fentanyl.
Russia-Ukraine war
Though the countries are concentrating on mending frayed ties, the situations in Ukraine and the Middle East continue to remain a challenge.
The US Treasury announced this month that it was prepared to sanction Chinese banks, companies and leaders for their support to Moscow in the ongoing war. US diplomats and NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg have in the past few days called out Beijing’s support for Moscow as “vital” for Russian war efforts.
Russia and China announced a “no limits” partnership in February 2022, just weeks before Moscow announced its “special military operation” against Ukraine. Trade between the two countries crossed $240 billion in 2023, a 26.3 percent increase as reported by Reuters.
Russian President Vladimir Putin also announced he was likely to visit China in May — his first visit after starting a fresh term earlier this year.
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