U.S. President Joe Biden spoke by phone for almost two hours with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, on Tuesday. The conversation covered all the current hot spots in the increasingly acrimonious relationship between the two countries.
While bilateral issues dominated the discussion, rising tensions in the Western Pacific related to both Taiwan and the South China Sea were seemingly very high on the agenda as both governments made a point to reference that part of the dialogue in their official readouts:
