 China said the US made a "mistake" in inviting Taiwan to Biden's

upcoming democracy summit.

 Xi Jinping recently warned that Biden was "playing with fire" when it
comes to Taiwan. 

 Tensions over Taiwan have contributed to an extraordinarily thorny

dynamic between the US and China.

T he Chinese government warned President Joe Biden that inviting

Taiwan to the upcoming democracy summit he's hosting was a "mistake."

China opposes "any official interaction between the US and China's Taiwan
region," Zhu Fenglian, a spokesperson for China's Taiwan Affairs Office, said
on Wednesday, per The Guardian. 

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A list of participants in the summit was published on Tuesday, revealing that

Taiwan was among the 110 invitees. The summit is set to occur virtually on
December 9 and 10.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment
from Insider.
The US-China relationship is at a historic low, with tensions over Taiwan at
the heart of the rift. 

Last week, Chinese leader Xi Jinping cautioned Biden against promoting

Taiwanese independence, stating that the US was "playing with fire" when it
comes to Taiwan. The Chinese government considers Taiwan, a self-
governed island democracy, to be a breakaway province. 

"Such moves are extremely dangerous, just like playing with fire," Xi said
during a virtual meeting with Biden last Monday, per the official Xinhua News
Agency. "Whoever plays with fire will get burnt," Xi added.

"We have patience and will strive for the prospect of peaceful reunification
with utmost sincerity and efforts," Xi told Biden. "That said, should the
separatist forces for 'Taiwan independence' provoke us, force our hands or
even cross the red line, we will be compelled to take resolute measures."

Biden has not explicitly called for Taiwanese independence, but has sent
mixed messages in terms of US policy toward Taiwan. Biden and other US
officials have reiterated their position that China and Taiwan should
negotiate their relationship peacefully.

The US cut off formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan in 1979 when it
established official ties with China's foreign government. But Washington
has continued to have a robust, unofficial relationship with Taiwan, and
under the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979 the US is committed to providing the
island with defensive weapons. 

"The US will make available to Taiwan such defense articles and defense
services in such quantity as may be necessary to enable Taiwan to maintain
a sufficient self-defense capability," the law states.

The US has generally upheld a policy of "strategic ambiguity" toward Taiwan

— intentionally being vague about how it would respond if China attacked.
But Biden in October seemingly committed the US to Taiwan's defense if
China invaded, which led the White House to walk back on his comments. 

Biden has made boosting democracy worldwide a major foreign policy goal,
and on the campaign trail vowed to hold a summit focusing on this. He
entered the White House less than a month after a violent insurrection at the
US Capitol, which Secretary of State Antony Blinken said damaged
America's ability to promote democracy. 

"American democracy is not a model for anybody right now, but that doesn't
mean democracy is not a model," Archon Fung, the Winthrop Laflin
McCormack Professor of Citizenship and Self-Government at the Harvard
Kennedy School, told Insider in January. "If you're interested in democracy,
don't look at American democracy — especially not right now — on how to
have a good democracy. There's a lot of other places that are doing it much
better and we should be learning from them."

Fung said Biden's democracy summit was a "great idea," but went on to say
that the goal of such an event should be "what we can learn from other
places to make America that city on a hill that we would all love it to be."

The US was listed as a "backsliding democracy" for the first time in an

annual report from the Stockholm-based International Institute for
Democracy and Electoral Assistance. The report warned of the decline of
democracy worldwide, stating that the number of countries "moving in the
direction of authoritarianism is three times the number moving towards
democracy."