The US’ top envoy to China yesterday called on the nation to reopen dialogue it halted after US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan almost two months ago.
“Our message to the Chinese is: Let’s talk, open these dialogues and let’s move forward,” US Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns told the Milken Institute Asia Summit in Singapore via videoconference.
The US needs to work with China on issues such as climate change and health, even as they compete on technology, Burns said.
Photo: AP
Washington views Beijing as trying to change the “status quo” regarding Taiwan, he said, adding: “We’ve warned them that we won’t agree to that — we don’t accept it.”
The comments mark an effort by Washington to soothe tensions with Beijing that spiked when Pelosi became the first sitting US House speaker in 25 years to visit Taiwan.
China warned Pelosi not to visit, and when she did, it responded with unprecedented military drills and by firing ballistic missiles over Taiwan.
It also cut off talks with the US on defense and climate change.
At the time, US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby called China’s cutting of military talks with the US “an irresponsible act,” but added that “not all channels of communication between our military leaders are shut down.”
Kirby also said that China’s ending of climate change talks amounted to “punishing the whole world.”
US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry last week said there was still room for progress on climate talks with China even though they had been suspended.
“I really hope China will decide sometime in the next days,” he said. “It is worth coming back to this, because we owe it to humankind.”
Burns also said that the US was monitoring China’s ties with Russia closely, although it has not seen any sign that Beijing has supported Moscow militarily or with help evading sanctions imposed after it invaded Ukraine.
China has refrained from endorsing the invasion, although earlier this month Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) called Russian President Vladimir Putin “an old friend” and said his nation is ready to work with Moscow.
“We’ve been very clear with the Chinese privately and publicly in saying that we’re watching that very carefully here, that China should not provide military support or support to help Russia evade sanctions,” Burns said.
He also highlighted China’s diverging stance on the Ukraine conflict, underscoring its neutrality at a recent UN meeting, but telling its own people that the US and NATO instigated the fighting.
Burns also spoke about other matters at the gathering.
“We reject what the People’s Republic of China has done in Hong Kong. It’s a shadow of what it was. There aren’t political freedoms now of a type that people just enjoyed a couple of years ago,” he said.
Burns also highlighted human rights concerns in Tibet and Xinjiang, particularly a lack of religious freedoms.
The US does not want to decouple from China, he said, pointing to the US$1.2 trillion that Americans hold in Chinese equities and debt securities.
“We’re encouraging Americans to invest here as long as it doesn’t cross our national security lines,” he said.
Malaysia yesterday installed a motorcycle-riding billionaire sultan as its new king in lavish ceremonies for a post seen as a ballast in times of political crises. The coronation ceremony for Malaysia’s King Sultan Ibrahim, 65, at the National Palace in Kuala Lumpur followed his oath-taking in January as the country’s 17th monarch. Malaysia is a constitutional monarchy, with a unique arrangement that sees the throne change hands every five years between the rulers of nine Malaysian states headed by centuries-old Islamic royalty. While chiefly ceremonial, the position of king has in the past few years played an increasingly important role. Royal intervention was
X-37B COMPARISON: China’s spaceplane is most likely testing technology, much like US’ vehicle, said Victoria Samson, an official at the Secure World Foundation China’s shadowy, uncrewed reusable spacecraft, which launches atop a rocket booster and lands at a secretive military airfield, is most likely testing technology, but could also be used for manipulating or retrieving satellites, experts said. The spacecraft, on its third mission, was last month observed releasing an object, moving several kilometers away and then maneuvering back to within a few hundred meters of it. “It’s obvious that it has a military application, including, for example, closely inspecting objects of the enemy or disabling them, but it also has non-military applications,” said Marco Langbroek, a lecturer in optical space situational awareness at Delft
The Philippine Air Force must ramp up pilot training if it is to buy 20 or more multirole fighter jets as it modernizes and expands joint operations with its navy, a commander said yesterday. A day earlier US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said that the US “will do what is necessary” to see that the Philippines is able to resupply a ship on the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) that Manila uses to reinforce its claims to the atoll. Sullivan said the US would prefer that the Philippines conducts the resupplies of the small crew on the warship Sierra Madre,
AIRLINES RECOVERING: Two-thirds of the flights canceled on Saturday due to the faulty CrowdStrike update that hit 8.5 million devices worldwide occurred in the US As the world continues to recover from massive business and travel disruptions caused by a faulty software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, malicious actors are trying to exploit the situation for their own gain. Government cybersecurity agencies across the globe and CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz are warning businesses and individuals around the world about new phishing schemes that involve malicious actors posing as CrowdStrike employees or other tech specialists offering to assist those recovering from the outage. “We know that adversaries and bad actors will try to exploit events like this,” Kurtz said in a statement. “I encourage everyone to remain vigilant