China has hit back at the US-Japan show of alliance during talks between President Joe Biden and Japan Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, calling it an "ironic attempt of stoking division".
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China said Suga and Biden's news conference on Friday, in which they issued a joint statement on shared values in democracy and human rights and aired concerns about China's activities in the Indo-Pacific region, had gone "far beyond the scope of normal development of bilateral relations".
"It cannot be more ironic that such attempt of stoking division and building blocs against other countries is put under the banner of 'free and open'," the Chinese Embassy in Washington said in a statement on Saturday.
The statement by the Japanese and US leaders also mentioned the importance of "peace and stability" in the Taiwan Strait, marking the first time a Japanese prime minister had spoken out in a statement with the United States on Taiwan since 1969 talks between Richard Nixon and Eisaku Sato.
Japan, long cautious in managing relations with its neighbour, has become more outspoken with Suga.
The US and China have clashed over a wide range of issues in the last few years, including human rights in Tibet and the Xinjiang region, a crackdown on protests and political freedom in Hong Kong, China's assertion of its territorial claims to Taiwan and most of the South China Sea, and accusations Beijing was slow to inform the world about the COVID-19 outbreak.
China claims self-governing Taiwan as its territory and says, like Hong Kong, it should be under Beijing's control.
"The US should never try to play the Taiwan card," Le Yucheng, China's vice foreign minister, said in an interview with The Associated Press in Beijing on Friday.
"It is very dangerous. This is our red line. The US should never try to cross it."
Australian Associated Press
