China says Xi warned Biden not to 'play with fire' as tensions mount over Taiwan and a possible Pelosi visit

• China's Xi delivered a fresh warning to Biden as the two leaders held their fifth call on Thursday.
• An official statement on the call said that Xi warned Biden not to "play with fire."

Chinese President Xi Jinping delivered a fresh warning to President Joe Biden over Taiwan as tensions continue to mount between the two countries, according to a statement run by Chinese state media and Chinese diplomatic outposts.

A statement posted on the website of the Chinese embassy in the US said that the two leaders — who held their fifth call on Thursday — discussed Taiwan, the self-ruled democratic island at the center of strained US-China relations.

"The position of the Chinese government and people on the Taiwan question is consistent, and resolutely safeguarding China's national sovereignty and territorial integrity is the firm will of the more than 1.4 billion Chinese people," China said in the statement.

"Public opinion cannot be defied. Those who play with fire will perish by it. It is hoped that the US will be clear-eyed about this," the statement said.

Tensions between the US and China have increased in recent months over Taiwan, which Beijing has long claimed as its own and has signaled that it is willing to use force to subdue. China on Thursday said Xi "firmly opposes" Taiwan's independence and any "interference by external forces."

Currently elevating tensions is a potential trip to Taiwan by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — a tentative move that has sparked Chinese threats of possible military action and plans for the movement of US military assets. The US Navy has moved an aircraft carrier and its strike group escorts into the South China Sea.

Senior Pentagon officials have warned in recent weeks that Chinese military behavior around the South China Sea and elsewhere in the region has becoming increasingly "dangerous" and "unsafe," warning of the potential for a "major incident or accident."

The White House released its own statement on the call between Biden and Xi, noting that "the two presidents discussed a range of issues important to the bilateral relationship and other regional and global issues."

"On Taiwan," it read, "President Biden underscored that the United States policy has not changed and that the United States strongly opposes unilateral efforts to change the status quo or undermine peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait."

Biden has previously been accused of undermining the US government's longstanding policy of strategic ambiguity regarding Taiwan. For years, the US has been intentionally opaque about whether it would respond militarily if China attacked Taiwan, but Biden, on more than one occasion, has suggested that the US would indeed come to Taiwan's defense, frustrating China and leading the White House to walk back his comments and claim there's been no change to US policy.

Some China watchers say that Biden's muddled approach to the issue has escalated the contentious dynamic in the region, and between Washington and Beijing more generally.

"Longstanding US 'strategic ambiguity' has given way to strategic confusion. President Biden's misstatements on Taiwan are undermining the carefully devised policy that has kept the peace for decades," Bonnie Glaser, director of the Asia Program at the German Marshall Fund of the US, and Zack Cooper, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said in a New York Times op-ed Thursday.

"A single spark," Glaser and Cooper warned, "could ignite this combustible situation into a crisis that escalates to military conflict."