China and the United States have butted heads in recent years on issues ranging from Beijing’s aggression towards self-governing Taiwan to its crackdown in Hong Kong and alleged rights abuses in Xinjiang…reports Asian Lite News
President Xi Jinping said China and the United States must “find ways to get along” to safeguard world peace and development, state media reported Thursday, as he embarks on his precedent-breaking third term in power.
China and the United States have butted heads in recent years on issues ranging from Beijing’s aggression towards self-governing Taiwan to its crackdown in Hong Kong and alleged rights abuses in Xinjiang.
Washington has also accused Beijing of providing diplomatic cover for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Xi sealed another five years as China’s leader at the end of a twice-a-decade Communist Party Congress on Sunday.
“The world today is neither peaceful nor tranquil,” Xi wrote in a congratulatory letter to the National Committee on US-China Relations — some of his first remarks since the Congress — according to Chinese state broadcaster CCTV.
“As major powers, strengthening communication and cooperation between China and the US will help to increase global stability and certainty, and promote world peace and development,” he reportedly told the New York-based non-profit organisation.
Xi added that China was “willing to work with the US to give mutual respect, coexist peacefully… (and) find ways to get along in the new era”, the broadcaster reported.
Doing so “will not only be good for both countries, but also benefit the world”, Xi wrote.
The Biden administration said this month that China is the only competitor to the United States “with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military and technological power to advance that objective”.
‘Xi knows we are not seeking conflict’
Earlier, President Joe Biden, meeting his top military advisers, said on Wednesday that the United States does not seek conflict with China and that Chinese President Xi Jinping knows this.
Biden said the United States would continue to lead ona number of issues, from Russia’s aggression in Ukraine to climate change to the Indo-Pacific region.
“We do not seek conflict with them,” he said of the Chinese.
Wednesday’s meeting, which brought together top Pentagon brass, the 11 combatant commanders and civilian and military leaders from the country’s six military branches, follows the recent release of. Biden’s formal National Security Strategy, which identifies China as “America’s most consequential geopolitical challenge.”
“Beijing has ambitions to create an enhanced sphere of influence in the Indo-Pacific and to become the world’s leading power,” the strategy blueprint reads in part. “It is using its technological capacity and increasing influence over international institutions to create more permissive conditions for its own authoritarian model, and to mold global technology use and norms to privilege its interests and values. Beijing frequently uses its economic power to coerce countries.”
The U.S.-China ties have become increasingly strained after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taipei in August. The California Democrat became the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit Taiwan in decades, sparking a series of retaliatory Chinese military exercises surrounding the island that is 100 miles off of the mainland. China also called off planned bilateral exchanges with the U.S., including planned
