US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in an interview that aired on Sunday that China had recently acted “more aggressively abroad” and was behaving “increasingly in adversarial ways.”
Asked by CBS News’ 60 Minutes if Washington was heading toward a military confrontation with Beijing, Blinken said: “It’s profoundly against the interests of both China and the United States to, to get to that point, or even to head in that direction.”
“What we’ve witnessed over the last several years is China acting more repressively at home and more aggressively abroad. That is a fact,” he added.
Photo: Reuters
Asked about the reported theft of hundreds of billions of dollars or more in US trade secrets and intellectual property by China, Blinken said that the administration of US President Joe Biden had “real concerns” about the intellectual property issue.
He said it sounded like the actions “of someone who’s trying to compete unfairly and increasingly in adversarial ways, but we’re much more effective and stronger when we’re bringing like-minded and similarly aggrieved countries together to say to Beijing: ‘This can’t stand and it won’t stand.’”
The Chinese embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Blinken’s interview.
Biden’s administration on Friday said that China had fallen short on its commitments to protect US intellectual property in the “phase one” US-China trade deal signed last year.
The commitments were part of the sweeping deal between then-US president Donald Trump’s administration and Beijing, which included regulatory changes on agricultural biotechnology and commitments to purchase about US$200 billion in US exports over two years.
Blinken arrived in London on Sunday for a G7 foreign ministers meeting where China is one of the issues on the agenda.
In the interview, Blinken said that the US is not aiming to “contain China,” but to “uphold this rules-based order — that China is posing a challenge to. Anyone who poses a challenge to that order, we’re going to stand up and — and defend it.”
Biden has identified competition with China as his administration’s greatest foreign policy challenge. In his first speech to the US Congress on Wednesday last week, he pledged to maintain a strong US military presence in the Indo-Pacific and boost US technological development.
Blinken said he speaks to Biden “pretty close to daily.”
Last month, Blinken said the US was concerned about China’s aggressive actions against Taiwan and said it would be a “serious mistake” for anyone to try to change the “status quo” in the western Pacific by force.
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