President Biden on Friday called Chinese President Xi Jinping to request help cutting off Russia with sanctions and a ban on military supplies that could be used in Ukraine — but the call happened as China’s military provocatively sailed an aircraft carrier through the Taiwan Strait.
The video call began at 9:03 a.m., the White House said.
It was not immediately clear if Xi had agreed to any steps to penalize Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government for its 23-day-old war in Ukraine amid heavy bombardment of major cities and widespread civilian casualties.
Putin reportedly is seeking weapons from China, but Russia’s invasion of Ukraine also has raised concern about Beijing’s intentions toward Taiwan.
Biden spoke with Xi for the first time in four months just hours after the Chinese aircraft carrier Shandong sailed through the Taiwan Strait trailed by a US Navy destroyer, Reuters reported.
Taiwan is internationally recognized as part of China, but the island of more than 23 million people has been de facto independent since the Chinese civil war ended in Communist victory on the mainland in the late 1940s.
China has notably not joined the NATO alliance in imposing biting economic sanctions against Russia.
“This is an opportunity for President Biden to assess where President Xi stands,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Thursday.
“There has been, of course … the absence of denunciation by China of what Russia is doing. This flies in the face, of course, of everything China stands for, including the basic principles of the UN Charter, including the basic principles of respect for sovereignty of nations,” Psaki said.
“And so, the fact that China has not denounced what Russia is doing, in and of itself, speaks volumes. And it also speaks volumes not only in Russia or in Ukraine, but around the world.”
Biden most recently spoke with Xi during a three-and-a-half-hour virtual summit in November.
In response to a question from The Post, Biden claimed in January that he pressed Xi to be transparent on the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic during that call, which the US intelligence community believes may have started even though Psaki had given reporters the opposite impression. Biden said his own press team was unaware of him doing so because they weren’t in the room for the exchange.
First son Hunter Biden’s attorney Chris Clark said less than a week after President Biden’s November summit with Xi that he divested a 10 percent stake in an investment fund controlled by Chinese state-owned entities. Hunter Biden and the White House provided no further details. That firm, BHR Partners, was registered 12 days after Hunter joined Vice President Biden aboard Air Force Two for a 2013 trip to Beijing.
