In a meeting between President Xi Jinping and President Biden on the sidelines of the recently concluded APEC meeting in Lima, Peru, Xi pointed to four red lines for China, which must not be challenged or crossed: China’s right to development, China’s path and system, democracy and human rights, and the question of Taiwan as reported in a Global Times article of November 17th. Xi stated that the one-China principle, and the three China-US joint communiques are the political foundation of China-US relations.
The three China-US joint communiques have played an important role in the establishment of relations between the two countries. The first communique between Nixon and Premier Zhou Enlai was issued February 28th, 1972, in which the US formally acknowledges that “All Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain, that there is but one China and that Taiwan is part of China,” and that the US Government “reaffirms its interest in a peaceful settlement of the Taiwan question by the Chinese themselves.” It should be noted that prior to this, on October 25th, 1971, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution, which restored PRC to the Chinese seat at the UN and expelled ROC (Taiwan).
