By Gloria Riviera, ABC NEWS
Vice President Joe Biden gestures during a meeting with Chinese Vice President Li Yuanchao after a welcoming ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Dec. 4. (Photo: Lintao Zhang, AFP/Getty Images)
BEIJING — Over the course of more than five hours of discussions in Beijing on Wednesday, Vice President Joe Biden and China’s leader Xi Jinping held steadfast to their respective country’s position regarding rising tensions in the East China Sea.
Biden said he was “very direct” when he told President Xi the U.S. does not recognize China’s contentious Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ). He indicated the White House expects China to take steps to ease the concerns of its neighbors to avoid undue escalation. For his part, President Xi defended China’s right to police the skies over the disputed islands known as Diaoyu in China and Senkaku in Japan. He said he would “take in” what Biden had to say but gave no guarantee China would consider recalibrating its position.
Aides said they did not expect Biden to leave Beijing with a concrete resolution but the outcome – a near diplomatic stalemate – almost certainly falls short of what Japan and even the U.S. might have envisioned. It also places the ball squarely in China’s court.
“It’s up to China,” said a senior administration official traveling with Biden who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
That the two met for such an extended period of time may be due to their long-standing personal relationship. Biden has spent more time with Xi than any other leading U.S. politician, a fact that means, as one aide put it, the two men “can be very direct about difficult issues.”
On Thursday, his last day in Beijing, Biden told a group of American executives doing business in China that, “China’s recent and sudden announcement of the establishment of a new air defense identification zone has, to state the obvious, caused significant apprehension in the region.” Whether or not Biden’s visit did anything to diffuse that apprehension remains to be seen.
Read the full story by Gloria Riviera, ABC NEWS.