U.S. President Joe Biden spoke to his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping on Wednesday, his first direct contact with the leader of the world's second-largest economy since winning the November presidential election and taking office last month.
It was the first call between Xi and a U.S. president since the Chinese leader spoke with former President Donald Trump in March last year. Since then, relations between the two countries have plunged to their worst level in decades.
Biden told Xi it was a U.S. priority to preserve a free and open Indo-Pacific region and "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 in a statement.