Biden agreed to another of China's ‘16 demands’

FPI / March 31, 2022

Geostrategy-Direct.com

Several items on a list of “16 demands” China delivered to the Biden administration last year have been fulfilled, including a pledge by Team Biden not to seek to change China’s communist system.

Joe Biden told Chinese supreme leader Xi Jinping during a video summit earlier this month that the U.S. "does not aim to change China’s system; the revitalization of its alliances is not targeted at China; the U.S. does not support ‘Taiwan independence’; and it has no intention to seek a conflict with China,” China’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has made protection of the current ruling system one of its most important priorities since Xi sought to revitalize so-called “Marxism-Leninism with Chinese characteristics” after he became president and Communist Party chair in 2012, security correspondent Bill Gertz noted in a Washington Times report.

The demand that the U.S. not seek to alter the communist system was first presented to Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman during a visit to China in the summer of 2021. At that meeting, Chinese officials presented her with a list of 16 demands and 10 specific cases of concern that they said must be resolved to Beijing’s satisfaction before U.S.-China relations can improve.

A senior Biden administration official said around the time of the Sherman visit that the Chinese demands were rejected. Yet several items on the list have subsequently come to pass, including the promise not to try to overthrow the communist system.

Other demands included ending the case of Huawei Technologies executive Meng Wanzhou, who was released from federal fraud charges in September, and relaxing curbs on Chinese officials who work for state media. The curbs were loosened late last year.

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