AMN / WEB DESK
US and China have agreed to resume military-to-military communications in an effort to ease rising tensions.
US President Joe Biden announced this after a meeting with China’s President Xi Jinping in California last evening.
Mr Biden also said both leaders had agreed to establish a direct line of communication with one another.
China severed military-to-military communications last year after the then US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan.
U.S. President Joe Biden said he made “positive steps” during an intense hourslong meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping Wednesday.
The two agreed to re-establish lapsed military communications, work together to assess the threats posed by artificial intelligence, and work to combat the scourge of fentanyl.
However, Biden’s off-the-cuff comment that he still sees the powerful Chinese leader as a “dictator,” revealed that the two leaders remain, in some ways, far apart.
“Well, look, he is,” Biden said, in response to a shouted question from the clamoring throng of journalists at the secluded meeting site outside of San Francisco, where 21 Asia-Pacific economies are holding a summit this week.
“He is a dictator in a sense that he is a guy that runs a country, a communist country, that’s based on a totally different form of government than ours.”
The White House chose a sprawling, bucolic estate more than an hour’s drive from San Francisco for this heavily symbolic visit covering a range of key issues that included Taiwan – the self-governing island that China claims – the possible resumption of military communications, touchy trade disagreements, the origination of fentanyl ingredients in China, and human rights issues.
The scenic grounds cover the San Andreas fault, where the Pacific and North American tectonic plates touch.
Biden said he was “candid” on these tough issues that divide the two countries – as seen in the mixed reception that residents of this diverse city gave to the Chinese leader, with both anti-communist protesters and pro-Xi greeters lining the streets. On Wednesday, groups in at least two locations descended into fisticuffs, as documented in videos posted on social media.
Xi, in his brief remarks before the leaders began their meeting, said the two nations are inextricably linked.
“For two large countries like China, the United States turning their back on each other is not an option,” he said. “It is unrealistic for one side to remodel the other. And conflict and confrontation has unbearable consequences for both sides