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U.S. President Joe Biden on Wednesday said his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping knows that Washington is not seeking any conflict with Beijing.
What Happened: Biden, meeting his top military advisers, said the U.S. would continue to lead on a number of issues, from Russia’s war in Ukraine to climate change to the Indo-Pacific region.
“And we must maintain, as I said, our military advantage, but we’re making it clear that we don’t seek conflict. I told him that we’re looking for competition. There’ll be stiff — stiff competition, but not — there doesn’t need to be conflict. But we are going to compete,” Biden said of Xi.
Blinken’s Warning: U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned Beijing was trying to “speed up” its seizure of Taiwan in an interview with Bloomberg. “What’s changed is this — a decision by the government in Beijing that that status quo was no longer acceptable, that they wanted to speed up the process by which they would pursue reunification,” Blinken said.
“They also made decisions about how they would do that, including exerting more pressure on Taiwan, coercion — making life difficult in a variety of ways on Taiwan in the hopes that that would speed reunification,” he added.
Why It Matters: The statements come immediately after China said it’s closer to achieving “complete reunification” with Taiwan.
President Biden has vowed to intervene militarily to defend Taiwan if “there was an unprecedented attack” from the Chinese amid escalating tension across the Taiwan Strait.
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Image and article originally from www.benzinga.com. Read the original article here.