China’s Foreign Ministry has declined to comment on US President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw from his re-election bid “in the interests” of the Democratic Party and the United States.
“This is an internal matter of the United States, we are not going to comment on it,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning was all that was said at the department’s official press conference when asked about the matter.
This is the first official reaction from the Asian giant to Biden’s decision, who offered his support to Vice President Kamala Harris, who confirmed her intention to “obtain and win” the nomination for the November 5 elections.
After several years of tensions due to trade disagreements, technological competition and new episodes of mutual sanctions, ties between Beijing and Washington, which will celebrate their 45th anniversary in 2024, have been experiencing a relative and lukewarm thaw for several months.
Meeting
The last meeting between the US president and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, took place in November last year during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in San Francisco (USA), where both leaders showed some rapprochement by reaching agreements to combat fentanyl trafficking and reopen military communication channels.
However, after the meeting, Biden again called Xi a “dictator,” prompting protests from Beijing. And in recent weeks, tensions have flared again: for example, on Wednesday China announced that it would suspend negotiations on new consultations on arms control and non-proliferation over issues such as US arms sales to Taiwan.
The news of Biden’s withdrawal has also had a strong impact on Chinese social media, especially on Weibo – the Chinese version of X, which is censored in the Asian country – where the hashtag for Biden’s resignation has accumulated 410 million views and 92,000 comments.
Search
Early Monday morning, the news item ‘Biden withdraws from the election’ was the most searched for on that network, where it garnered more than 39,000 discussions and was joined by other searches such as ‘Biden supports Harris’ candidacy’ and ‘Harris speaks to praise Biden’.
In their comments, Chinese netizens wondered what will happen to Kamala Harris, others pointed out that they are “witnessing history” or that Biden is “running out of money,” and some resorted to irony, saying that “it was Trump who was shot, but it was Biden who fell.”
Beijing / EFE
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2024-07-23 19:40:57
