China has formally congratulated Joe Biden on his election victory, almost a week after many of Washington’s allies and Taiwan acknowledged the Democrat as the winner of the US presidential contest.
Mr Biden has been congratulated by multiple European governments and allies, as well as Taiwan, the self-ruled island claimed by Beijing, even though President Donald Trump has refused to concede defeat.
“We respect the choice of the American people,” Wang Wenbin, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson, said on Friday. “We extend congratulations to Mr Biden.”
Mr Wang had declined to comment on Mr Biden’s victory earlier in the week, saying only that Beijing was waiting for the result to be confirmed “according to US laws and procedures”.
President Xi Jinping’s administration was initially worried that congratulating Mr Biden could anger Mr Trump, who still has two months in office to hit out at China, according to a US expert at a government think-tank in Beijing.
Mr Trump has accused Beijing of failing to contain the Covid-19 pandemic, blaming the health crisis for sinking a surging US economy and ruining his chances of re-election.
On Thursday, Mr Trump signed an executive order barring US investors from investing in companies that allegedly have links to China’s military. The order will not come into effect until next year but is the latest punitive measure imposed on Beijing by the Trump administration.
Separately, Washington extended a deadline for Chinese technology company ByteDance to divest from the US operations of TikTok, its short-video app. The company was given 90 days to address US national security concerns after Mr Trump signed an executive order in August or be forced to sell the US unit by Thursday if it failed to do so.
In the 40 years since Beijing and Washington formally established diplomatic relations, the Chinese government has never had to deal with such a difficult protocol dilemma.
When former presidents Jimmy Carter and George HW Bush lost their bids for re-election in 1980 and 1992 respectively, neither challenged the outcome.
When George W Bush, Mr Bush’s son, and Al Gore contested the result of the 2000 election in court, Beijing also acted cautiously. At that time, Jiang Zemin, China’s president, did not formally congratulate Mr Bush until he had won a Supreme Court case and Mr Gore formally conceded.
Wu Xinbo, dean of the Institute of International Studies at Fudan University, said he expected Mr Biden’s China policy to be less volatile than Mr Trump’s despite continuing disagreements over trade and human rights.
He added that the end of Mr Trump’s public attacks against China’s leaders and its political system would help soothe ties. “This is something that wasn’t even done in the cold war and it’s very irrational,” he said.