US President Joe Biden and China's Xi Jinping traded strong warnings on the future of Taiwan at a virtual summit meant to establish "guardrails" against conflict between their rival superpowers.

The video-link summit, which took place late Monday in Washington and early Tuesday in Beijing, lasted a "longer than expected" three and a half hours, a senior US official told reporters. "The conversation was respectful and straightforward."

While the goal was to settle an increasingly volatile relationship between the giant economic and geopolitical competitors, tension over Taiwan -- a self-governing democracy claimed by China -- loomed large.

Chinese state media reported after the summit that Xi cautioned Biden that encouraging Taiwanese independence would be "playing with fire."

"Some people in the US intend to 'use Taiwan to control China.' This trend is very dangerous and is like playing with fire, and those who play with fire will get burned," he was quoted as saying by Xinhua news agency.

The White House readout after the summit was considerably more measured, but between the lines, Biden's pushback against Beijing's increasingly aggressive posture toward Taiwan was clear.

"On Taiwan, President Biden underscored that the United States... strongly opposes unilateral efforts to change the status quo or undermine peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait," the White House statement said.

The statement reiterated longstanding US policy that does not recognize Taiwan's independence but supports defense of the island.

According to the US official, who asked not to be identified, there was "extended discussion of Taiwan" during the summit.

Biden also raised "concerns" over wider issues of human rights abuses and mass repression against the Uyghurs in the northwest region of Xinjiang.

The two leaders have spoken by phone twice since Biden's inauguration in January but with Xi refusing to travel abroad because of the pandemic, an online video meeting was the only option short of an in-person summit.

- Avoid veering into conflict -

The White House emphasized it did not expect -- or get -- any concrete changes out of the summit. Rather the goal was to build on earlier contacts with Xi to manage a relationship that is too big to fail.

Speaking from the White House to Xi on a television screen, Biden said it was their "responsibility as leaders of China and the United States to ensure that the competition between our countries does not veer into conflict, whether intended or unintended."

"We need to establish some common sense guardrails," he said.

Instead, the aim should be for "simple, straightforward competition," Biden said, promising a "candid" discussion.

Xi, speaking from Beijing, called Biden "my old friend," but said their countries had to work more closely.

"We face multiple challenges together. As the world's two largest economies and permanent members of the UN Security Council, China and the United States need to increase communication and cooperation," he said, speaking through an interpreter in brief public remarks, before they went behind closed doors.

Both Biden and Xi emphasized the need for working together on major global issues, especially Covid-19 and climate change.

"A sound and steady China-US relationship" is needed "for safeguarding a peaceful and stable international environment," Xi said.

- Biden gets domestic boost -

Relations between the superpowers plummeted during the presidency of Donald Trump, who launched a trade war with China while assailing Beijing's response to an international probe into the origins of the Covid pandemic in the Chinese city of Wuhan.

Biden has recast the confrontation more broadly as a struggle between democracy and autocracy.

He got a boost Monday when he signed into law a $1.2 trillion infrastructure package, the biggest of its kind in more than half a century. Biden describes the initiative as an important step in catching up with years of intensive Chinese government investments, thereby proving that democracies can compete.

"The world is changing," he said in a White House speech. "We have to be ready."

While the day-to-day tone is less erratic than in the Trump era, tension over Taiwan in particular is threatening to escalate into dangerous new territory.

China has ramped up military activities near Taiwan in recent years, with a record number of warplanes intruding into the island's air defense zone in October.

The United States says it supports Taiwan's self-defense but is ambiguous about whether it would intervene to help directly.

In the brief comments made in front of reporters, Xi referred to each country needing to "run our domestic affairs" but did not mention US criticism of Beijing's saber-rattling around Taiwan, mass human rights violations or other sore points.

China's foreign ministry on Monday put the onus on Biden to improve relations.

"We hope that the US will work in the same direction as China to get along with each other," foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told reporters.

Bill Richardson: former US diplomat, global troubleshooter
Washington (AFP) Nov 15, 2021 - Bill Richardson has served as an ambassador, cabinet secretary and governor of New Mexico, but since he returned to being a regular US citizen, he has dedicated his life to a role with similarly high stakes.

Richardson is a freelance envoy, specializing in high-profile, difficult negotiations to obtain the release of Americans detained by hostile governments.

And on Monday, he celebrated his 74th birthday with his latest victory: facilitating the release of American journalist Danny Fenster from a prison in Myanmar, where he was jailed for 11 years last week -- and faced a possible life sentence.

Fenster was freed on "humanitarian grounds" and deported by the ruling junta in Myanmar.

The Richardson Center, founded by the former US ambassador to the United Nations, tweeted a photo of him standing with Fenster in front of a small plane on the tarmac in Myanmar's capital Naypyidaw.

The center said the release of the 37-year-old Fenster had been secured following "face-to-face negotiations" between Richardson and junta chief Min Aung Hlaing, who is the target of US sanctions after seizing power in a February coup.

However, just a week ago, Richardson had told AFP in an interview, at the conclusion of a previous "humanitarian" mission to Myanmar, that he had not raised Fenster's case in his meetings.

At the time, he said, without offering more details, that the State Department had specifically asked him not to discuss the issue.

In private, US officials suggested they were frustrated by Richardson's activism, and expressed concern that it could undermine Washington's official efforts on Fenster's behalf.

The State Department had regularly insisted it was doing everything in its power to obtain Fenster's freedom.

On Monday after Fenster's release, department spokesman Ned Price reiterated that Richardson had not gone to Myanmar "at the direction of the US government."

But he added: "We have been in regular and, in more recent hours, almost constant contact with the governor and with his team."

In a statement, Fenster's family offered thanks to all who helped secure his release, "especially Ambassador Richardson" -- without a specific word of thanks to the US government.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken thanked the veteran Democrat as well.

- Diplomatic gunslinger -

Born on November 15, 1947, Richardson -- son of a Mexican mother and American father -- showed an early flair for baseball, and was drafted as a pitcher by the Kansas City Royals.

When a professional career in sports did not pan out, Richardson earned a bachelor's degree at Tufts University and did a Master's degree at its prestigious Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

He was one of the first members of the Hispanic community to assume a cabinet-level position in the US government.

His resume is impressive: he is a former congressman, UN envoy, energy secretary under Bill Clinton in the late 1990s, and then two-term governor of New Mexico.

Richardson was the first Latino to run for the US presidency, with a fleeting bid in the Democratic primaries in 2007 -- a process that eventually yielded Barack Obama as the party's candidate.

Richardson backed Obama, but ended up withdrawing his name from consideration to be his commerce secretary when a federal investigation over campaign finance derailed his nomination in 2009.

In parallel with his traditional career in politics, Richardson developed a reputation as a diplomatic gunslinger, and was even sometimes dubbed the "Indiana Jones" of American diplomacy.

He held high-stakes private face-to-face meetings with a who's who of strongmen on the US pariah list, including Iraq's Saddam Hussein, Cuba's Fidel Castro, North Korea's Kim Jong Il (father of current leader Kim Jong Un) and Venezuela's Nicolas Maduro.

The Richardson Center for Global Engagement says one of its primary missions is "negotiating for the release of prisoners and hostages held by hostile regimes or criminal organizations."

Indeed, Richardson has several successes under his belt, but also a few setbacks, which are deftly underplayed by his media-savvy team.

His missions have extended to wider political issues, such as North Korea's nuclear program or diplomatic overtures to Myanmar's junta -- work that has elicited criticism from rights activists who accuse him of offering legitimacy to authoritarian regimes.

"I'm not a government. I don't legitimize governments," Richardson told AFP last week.

"I'm just one person that is trying to make a difference."

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US, China trade Taiwan warnings ahead of Biden-Xi summit
Washington (AFP) Nov 14, 2021
The top diplomats from China and the United States have exchanged stern warnings over the flashpoint issue of Taiwan, ahead of Monday's hotly awaited summit between their leaders. The virtual meeting of presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping comes against a backdrop of rising tensions - in part over Taiwan, a self-ruling democracy claimed by Beijing, but also over trade, human rights and other issues. In a phone call Friday with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi to discuss preparations for the summ ... read more