BIDEN, XI CLASH OVER HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES

Joe Biden clashed with Xi Jinping, the Chinese president, over the treatment of

Xinjiang’s Uyghur Muslims, during their first phone call since Biden came to power.

Wednesday's call was the first between Xi and a U.S. president since the Chinese leader spoke with Donald Trump last March. Since then, relations between the two countries have fallen to the worst in decades.

Biden “underscored his fundamental concerns about Beijing's coercive and unfair economic practices, crackdown in Hong Kong, human rights abuses in Xinjiang, and increasingly assertive actions in the region, including toward Taiwan,” the White House said. President Xi pushed back, warning that Taiwan, Hong Kong and Xinjiang were “China's internal affairs.”