Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) yesterday headed to Russia for security talks after two days of meetings with US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan over the weekend in Malta.
China’s top foreign policy official will be in Russia until Thursday for a round of China-Russia strategic security consultations, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a brief statement.
The US and China are at odds over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. China has refrained from taking sides in the war, saying that while a country’s territory must be respected, the West needs to consider Russia’s security concerns about NATO’s expansion. It has accused the US of prolonging the fighting by providing arms to Ukraine, weaponry that the US says is needed to defend against Russian aggression.
Photo: AP
China and Russia have grown closer in recent years as relations with the West have deteriorated for both.
Chinese ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning (毛寧) called Wang’s visit to Russia a routine one to hold in-depth talks on major strategic security interests.
Sullivan and Wang discussed a possible meeting of their leaders and communication channels between the world’s biggest economies during two days of talks that ended on Sunday.
They discussed high-level engagements and committed to consultations on political and security developments in the Asia-Pacific region, as well as maritime and arms-control issues and a policy planning consultation. The discussions are to take place in the coming months, a senior US administration official said. A Chinese foreign ministry statement gave a similar readout.
Wang reiterated that China considers Taiwan a red line in the relationship, according to the statement.
The two sides appeared to have made their usual points on Taiwan, although Sullivan emphasized that the provision of arms or foreign military assistance to Taipei does not mean the US supports Taiwanese independence or views it as a sovereign nation, the administration official said.
“This meeting was part of ongoing efforts to maintain open lines of communication and responsibly manage the relationship,” the White House said in a statement. “The United States noted the importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.”
Sullivan and Wang last met in May for two days of talks in Vienna. They discussed regional issues as well as Russia’s war against Ukraine and matters relating to the Taiwan Strait, which have been a persistent flashpoint in the relationship.
During the weekend meetings, Sullivan raised longstanding US concerns with China’s support for Russia’s war and about Wang’s trip to Moscow, the official said.
The US hopes those concerns will make an impression before Wang lands in Moscow, the official added.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
RSS