Presidential phone call

Lively contact: Biden and Xi fulfill promise

Xi Jinping and Joe Biden spoke on the phone.(Bild: AFP)

US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping have spoken on the phone again for the first time since their crisis meeting in California in November. Bilateral meetings were apparently agreed.

This was announced by the White House on Tuesday following the conversation. Last November, after a year of complete radio silence, the two presidents met in person near the US metropolis of San Francisco in order to stabilize relations between the two countries.

At the meeting in the Californian city where the UN was founded, the two presidents also agreed to speak regularly on the phone again in future. They have now complied with this. A high-ranking representative of the US government said that further exchanges at cabinet level could be expected after the presidential telephone call.

Top diplomats travel to China
US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen plans to travel to China again in the coming days and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in the coming weeks. Visits by members of the Chinese government to the US are also planned. In addition, there will soon be a telephone call between the defense ministers of the two countries.

The resumption of military communication between the two countries was seen as the most important result of the crisis meeting between Biden and Xi in California four and a half months ago. The US government had previously repeatedly complained that the usual direct exchange between the armed forces of the two countries was not working and that this could lead to dangerous misunderstandings and miscalculations in crisis situations.

Sticking point Taiwan
The relationship between the world's two largest economies has long been strained, partly due to economic sanctions against Beijing and fears in the West that China's army could invade Taiwan. Although the USA, like the vast majority of the international community, is committed to the "one-China policy", it has given its word to the renegade Chinese province of Taiwan with a military agreement.