Still cautious, China congratulates Biden on U.S. election victory

Nov. 13 (UPI) -- After refusing for several days to acknowledge former Vice President Joe Biden's election victory, the Chinese government on Friday congratulated him on becoming the president-elect of the United States.

China and Russia have been two of the most prominent nations that did not acknowledge Biden's electoral victory when it was projected by nearly all major news outlets last week.

Previously, Beijing said it preferred to wait for the official results, which will not come until all states certify their election results later this month -- and still echoed a similar tone in Friday's message.

"We extend congratulations to Mr. Biden and Ms. [Kamala] Harris, and we also understand that the U.S. election result will be decided in accordance with U.S. laws and procedures," Foreign Ministry representative Wang Wenbin told reporters Friday.

"China has been following U.S. domestic and international reactions to the U.S. presidential election," he added.

Russia, which interfered in the U.S. election four years ago with a preference for then-Republican nominee Donald Trump, didn't move from its position on Friday.

"The Russian president will certainly send a congratulatory message to the candidate who will be declared president-elect," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

"It will be done after the official results of the election are announced. As far as we understand, no one has been declared president-elect so far."

Peskov did say that Moscow didn't have the greatest relationship with the United States during former President Barack Obama's administration.

"[Russian President Vladimir Putin] met [Biden], but still, mostly he was meeting with his superior then, so the dialogue was mostly with Obama," Peskov said.

"That wasn't an easy dialogue, especially the last six months of Barack Obama's presidency. There were a lot of disagreements that were probably a harbinger of the degradation that occurred in our relations during Trump's presidency."

Populist Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who is said to admire and respect Trump, and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who's known by some as the "Trump of the Tropics," also have yet to acknowledge Biden's victory.

Obrador said this week he doesn't expect there will be a negative consequence for failing to acknowledge Biden as the president-elect.

"There's no reason for there to be reprisals because we're sticking to our ... principles [of non-intervention], to our laws," he said. "Besides, we're not a colony, we're a free, independent and sovereign country. The government of Mexico isn't the puppet of any foreign government."

Bolsonaro, who publicly rooted for Trump to win re-election, has dismissed the threat of economic sanctions under Biden's administration if Brazil fails to stop deforestation in the Amazon.