Top diplomats from the US and China on Friday held a “candid and constructive” discussion on issues vexing their strained relations over Taiwan and Russia’s war in Ukraine, the US Department of State said.
The meeting between US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference in Germany marked the latest and highest-level meeting between the two sides since US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) held talks late last year in California.
Blinken emphasized the importance of maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait and in the South China Sea, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said.
Photo: AFP
He also raised concerns about China’s support for Russia’s defense industrial base that Washington sees as helping Moscow’s military operations against Ukraine, as well as the need to expand on nascent counternarcotics efforts, he said.
“The two sides had a candid and constructive discussion on a range of bilateral, regional and global issues as part of ongoing efforts to maintain open lines of communication and responsibly manage competition in the relationship,” Miller said.
The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Wang called on the US to remove sanctions against Chinese companies and individuals.
Wang said that Washington’s policy of “derisking” economically from Beijing “has become ‘desinicizing,’ ‘building a tall fence’ and ‘de-coupling from China’” and “will come back to bite the US itself,” a ministry readout yesterday morning said.
He also called on the US to stop searches of Chinese nationals.
Chinese state media recently published reports of Chinese citizens being searched at the US border.
In one prominent case, a group of students led by their professor from Beijing Foreign Studies University were interrogated for three hours upon arriving at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, Xinhua news agency reported.
Wang affirmed that cooperation to combat the spread of fentanyl was going “positively” and would continue, as well as the agreement to keep military-to-military communications.
Both sides also discussed the Israel-Hamas war and the war in Ukraine.
Blinken “reiterated that the United States will stand up for our interests and values and those of our allies and partners,” Miller said.
The situations in the Middle East and with North Korea were also topics of conversation, he added.
“Both sides recognized the importance of maintaining open lines of communication between the United States and [China] across a range of strategic issues, including consultations and high-level meetings in key areas in the coming months,” he said.
Additional reporting by AFP
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