Chinese General Secretary Xi Jinping offered a belated congratulations to President-elect Joe Biden, after weeks of avoiding the gesture as President Trump’s allegations of election fraud unfolded.
“We hope both countries uphold the spirit of non-conflict, non-confrontation, mutual respect and win-win cooperation, focus on cooperation, manage and control conflict, to promote China-US relations towards a healthy and stable path, and advance the noble course of global peace and development jointly with every country and the global community,” Xi said, according to Chinese state-run media.
His phone call with Biden comes almost two weeks after a lower-profile message from the Chinese Foreign Ministry. Throughout the campaign season, Chinese state-media has attempted to turn the election controversies into a propaganda win, pointing to Trump’s corruption allegations against Biden as an argument to discredit American support for democracy overseas.
“For a long time, the United States has boasted about how its extremely lively election is a sign of the superiority of its system, and has even used this to willfully criticize the vast majority of developing countries,” the Chinese Communist Party’s People’s Daily asserted in October. “This extreme self-belief and arrogance by the ‘preacher of democracy’ should be reined in.”
Xi’s congratulatory phone call came after Trump agreed to allow the General Services Administration to “do what needs to be done with regard to initial protocols” for the transition, though he emphasized that his challenge of the results continued. “The GSA does not determine who the next President of the United States will be,” Trump tweeted.
Xi is one of two leaders of major U.S. adversaries who stand to benefit from controversies that embarrass the American system of governance. The other, Russian President Vladimir Putin, has yet to congratulate Biden.
“Recounts are underway in some states, which are necessary to deliver official election results,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday, per Russian state-run media.
