US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday met with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and senior Chinese officials, stressing the importance of “responsibly managing” the differences between the US and China as the two sides butt heads over a number of contentious bilateral, regional and global issues, including Taiwan and the South China Sea.
Talks between the two sides have increased over the past few months, even as differences have grown.
Blinken said he raised concerns with Xi about Taiwan and the South China Sea, along with China’s support for Russia and its invasion of Ukraine, as well as other issues including human rights, and the production and export of synthetic opioid precursors.
Photo: AFP
Blinken arrived in China on Wednesday, visiting Shanghai shortly before Biden signed the US$95 billion foreign aid package, including US$8 billion to counter China’s growing aggressiveness toward Taiwan and in the South China Sea. It also seeks to force TikTok’s China-based parent company to sell the social media platform.
Washington has become increasingly alarmed by Beijing’s growing aggressiveness toward Taiwan and its smaller Southeast Asian neighbors with which it has significant territorial and maritime disputes in the South China Sea.
China has railed against US assistance to Taiwan and immediately condemned the aid as a dangerous provocation. It also strongly opposes efforts to force TikTok’s sale.
Blinken sounded a positive note on the progress made in bilateral cooperation over the past few months, including in military communications, counternarcotics and artificial intelligence.
“We are committed to maintaining and strengthening lines of communication to advance that agenda, and again deal responsibly with our differences so we avoid any miscommunications, any misperceptions, any miscalculations,” he said.
However, he said he made clear to Xi ongoing concerns about Beijing’s supply of materials, including machine tools and micro electronics, to Moscow that Russian President Vladimir Putin is using to boost Russia’s defenses and its war on Ukraine.
“Russia would struggle to sustain its assault on Ukraine without China’s support,” Blinken told reporters after his meeting with Xi.
“Fueling Russia’s defense industrial base not only threatens Ukrainian security, it threatens European security,” he added. “As we’ve told China for some time, ensuring transatlantic security is a core US interest. In our discussions today, I made clear that China does not address this problem.”
Blinken also discussed with Xi China’s maritime maneuvers in the disputed South China Sea, and reiterated “ironclad” US support for the Philippines, its oldest treaty ally in Asia.
Xi said that China and the US must seek common ground “rather than engage in vicious competition.”
“China is happy to see a confident, open, prosperous and thriving US,” Xi said. “We hope the US can also look at China’s development in a positive light. This is a fundamental issue that must be addressed.”
Earlier, Blinken held lengthy talks with Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) and Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪).
Blinken and Wang Yi underscored the importance of keeping lines of communication open as they lamented persistent and deepening divisions that threaten global security.
The US Department of State later said that in the meeting with Wang Yi, Blinken “emphasized that the US would continue to stand up for our interests and values and those of our allies and partners, including on human rights and economic issues.”
US officials have said China’s ties with Russia would be a primary topic of conversation during Blinken’s visit, and just before yesterday’s meetings began, Putin announced he would visit China next month.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest foundry service provider, yesterday said that global semiconductor revenue is projected to hit US$1.5 trillion in 2030, after the figure exceeds US$1 trillion this year, as artificial intelligence (AI) demand boosts consumption of token and compute power. “We are still at the beginning of the AI revolution, but we already see a significant impact across the whole semiconductor ecosystem,” TSMC deputy cochief operating officer Kevin Zhang (張曉強) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Hsinchu City. “It is fair to say that in the past decade, smartphones and other mobile devices were
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
RSS