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
UNITED: The premier said Trump’s tariff comments provided a great opportunity for the private and public sectors to come together to maintain the nation’s chip advantage The government is considering ways to assist the nation’s semiconductor industry or hosting collaborative projects with the private sector after US President Donald Trump threatened to impose a 100 percent tariff on chips exported to the US, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said yesterday. Trump on Monday told Republican members of the US Congress about plans to impose sweeping tariffs on semiconductors, steel, aluminum, copper and pharmaceuticals “in the very near future.” “It’s time for the United States to return to the system that made us richer and more powerful than ever before,” Trump said at the Republican Issues Conference in Miami, Florida. “They
GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY: Taiwan must capitalize on the shock waves DeepSeek has sent through US markets to show it is a tech partner of Washington, a researcher said China’s reported breakthrough in artificial intelligence (AI) would prompt the US to seek a stronger alliance with Taiwan and Japan to secure its technological superiority, a Taiwanese researcher said yesterday. The launch of low-cost AI model DeepSeek (深度求索) on Monday sent US tech stocks tumbling, with chipmaker Nvidia Corp losing 16 percent of its value and the NASDAQ falling 612.46 points, or 3.07 percent, to close at 19,341.84 points. On the same day, the Philadelphia Stock Exchange Semiconductor Sector index dropped 488.7 points, or 9.15 percent, to close at 4,853.24 points. The launch of the Chinese chatbot proves that a competitor can
TAIWAN DEFENSE: The initiative would involve integrating various systems in a fast-paced manner through the use of common software to obstruct a Chinese invasion The first tranche of the US Navy’s “Replicator” initiative aimed at obstructing a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would be ready by August, a US Naval Institute (USNI) News report on Tuesday said. The initiative is part of a larger defense strategy for Taiwan, and would involve launching thousands of uncrewed submarines, surface vessels and aerial vehicles around Taiwan to buy the nation and its partners time to assemble a response. The plan was first made public by the Washington Post in June last year, when it cited comments by US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue
MARITIME SECURITY: Of the 52 vessels, 15 were rated a ‘threat’ for various reasons, including the amount of time they spent loitering near subsea cables, the CGA said Taiwan has identified 52 “suspicious” Chinese-owned ships flying flags of convenience that require close monitoring if detected near the nation, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said yesterday, as the nation seeks to protect its subsea telecoms cables. The stricter regime comes after a Cameroon-flagged vessel was briefly detained by the CGA earlier this month on suspicion of damaging an international cable northeast of Taiwan. The vessel is owned by a Hong Kong-registered company with a Chinese address given for its only listed director, the CGA said previously. Taiwan fears China could sever its communication links as part of an attempt
RSS