China congratulates Joe Biden on US election win, says 'we respect choice of Americans'

Nearly five days after the results of US Election 2020 were called by major media networks, China has sent ‘congratulations’ to president-elect Joe Biden on November 13. Even as countries across the globe poured in their good wishes for the incoming Biden administration, China became one of the lats major nations to have sent a congratulatory message for Trump’s successor. 

While US-China relations under the outgoing Donald Trump administration has reached an all-time-low, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin was quoted by the Associated Press saying that they respect the choice of the American people and congratulated Biden along with vice president-elect Kamala Harris on their groundbreaking win on November 3. However, Wang added that US procedures will confirm the result.

“We respect the choice of the American people,” foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said. “We congratulate Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris.”

Wang added, “at the same time, the result will be confirmed according to U.S. laws and procedures.”

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Biden has called Xi ‘thug’

Meanwhile, media reports have already claimed that 46th US President-elect Joe Biden's administration is likely to be as tough as Trump on several China-related issues such as the South China Sea. Earlier in the year while campaigning for the US Presidential elections Biden had blasted Beijing for its actions in Hong Kong and termed its policies towards Muslim minorities in the Xinjiang region as 'unconscionable'. He has also called Chinese President Xi Jinping a “thug”.

"This is a guy who does not have a democratic - with a small 'd' - bone in his body," Biden said during the February 25 Democratic Party primary debate with Bernie Sanders. "This is a guy who is a thug and who in fact has a million Uygurs in reconstruction camps, meaning concentration camps."

Moreover, in president-elect’s first China-related move, he declared that US security guarantees apply to Japan’s administration of the disputed Senkaku Islands. Irked by the same, Wang most recently, reiterated his government's position, claiming that the islands are inherently Chinese territory. 

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