Biden, Xi hold first phone call amid tense ties

WASHINGTON: Joe Biden challenged Chinese leader Xi Jinping on human rights, trade and regional muscle-flexing, in their first call since the new US president took office.

An increasingly assertive Beijing has tested US patience since Xi came to power, and under former president Donald Trump found itself on the receiving end of trade tariffs as relations frayed.

Biden is under pressure at home and abroad to maintain the stance that Trump adopted, as the West looks to hold China to account for human rights abuses against mainly Muslim Uighurs in Xinjiang and its crushing of opposition in Hong Kong, as well as sabre-rattling over Taiwan.

His call on Wednesday was about setting the tone for the relationship, at a time when many in the US and the wider world blame China for failing to contain the coronavirus pandemic, which was first discovered in Wuhan. 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 after the call.

The president told Xi his priorities were to protect the American people’s security, prosperity, health and way of life, and to preserve "a free and open Indo-Pacific." Washington and its Asian allies have bristled at China’s expansion in the South China Sea, a huge and economically vital waterway where Beijing has built militarised islands, despite multiple overlapping claims from neighbouring states. The US has repeatedly sailed warships through the area to press the point that the sea is globally recognized as international waters.