Biden and Xi on phone for 2 hours

PRESIDENT Joe Biden and China’s Xi Jinping spoke for nearly two hours on Friday as the White House looked to deter Beijing from providing military or economic assistance for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

China’s foreign ministry was first to issue a readout of the conversation, deploring “conflict and confrontation” as “not in anyone’s interest,” without assigning blame to Russia. Differences between Washington and Beijing over Russian president Vladimir Putin’s three-week-old war against Ukraine were expected to be at the centre of the call. The two leaders began their call at 1.03pm UK time. Prior to that White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, said Biden was going to question Xi about Beijing’s “rhetorical support” of Putin and an “absence of denunciation” of Russia’s brutal invasion. “This is an opportunity to assess where President Xi stands,” Psaki said.

China on Friday again sought to highlight its calls for negotiations and donations of humanitarian aid, while accusing the US of provoking Russia and fuelling the conflict by shipping arms to Ukraine.

“China has called for every effort to avoid civilian casualties all the time,” foreign ministry spokesperson, Zhao Lijian, told reporters at a daily briefing. “Which do the civilians in Ukraine need more: food and sleeping bags or machine guns and artillery? It’s easy to answer.”

The US-China relationship has got worse since the start of Biden’s presidency. He has criticised China for military provocations against Taiwan, human rights abuses against ethnic minorities and efforts to crush Hong Kong pro-democracy supporters.