U.S. airs concern about China-Russia alignment amid Ukraine war

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U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Saturday raised Washington’s concern about China’s alignment with Moscow amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Blinken said that was made clear during a more than five-hour meeting with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi on the Indonesian island of Bali, but both sides agreed to manage their differences on issues ranging from Taiwan to human rights and continue high-level exchanges.

At a press conference following the meeting, their first face-to-face talks since the start of Russia’s war against Ukraine, Blinken said, “Now, what you hear from Beijing is that it claims to be neutral. I would start with the proposition that it’s pretty hard to be neutral when it comes to this aggression.”

“But even if you accept that as a premise, I don’t think that China is in fact engaging in a way that suggests neutrality,” he said, adding it is “still standing by Russia, selling Russian propaganda around the world. It’s shielding Russia in international organizations.”

Wang, who did not hold a press conference, criticized the United States for worsening bilateral ties and said Washington’s stance has been inconsistent and distorted by what he described as a “China phobia.”

“If this ‘threat expansion’ is allowed to develop, the U.S. policy toward China will be a dead-end,” he said, according to a Chinese Foreign Ministry statement, which said they had “in-depth” discussions on Ukraine but provided no other information.

The top U.S. diplomat also said he stressed U.S. worries over China’s “increasingly provocative rhetoric and activity near Taiwan,” a self-ruled democratic island that Beijing views as its own, and “the vital importance of maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.”

But Wang refuted such views and demanded that the United States refrain from obstructing “China’s peaceful reunification process,” halt interfering with its internal affairs and avoid harming its “legitimate interests in the name of human rights and democracy.”

Blinken and Wang held talks following the Group of 20 gathering of foreign ministers on the resort island, as the world’s two largest economies seek to manage their intensifying rivalry.

Blinken said he and Wang addressed areas of disagreement and ways to manage and reduce risks.

“We’re committed to managing this relationship, this competition responsibly, as the world expects us to do, leading with diplomacy,” he said.

China is believed to have been of the view that the time has come for the two countries to advance talks as the United States grapples with high inflation.

Wang urged the United States to immediately scrap additional tariffs imposed on imports from China and stop unilateral sanctions on its companies.

Their discussions are likely to lay the groundwork for a possible engagement between U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping, which White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said in late June could be expected “over the course of the next few weeks.”

The last time Biden held talks with Xi was in March through a video call, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine started on Feb. 24.

During the call, Biden warned Xi of the “consequences” Beijing would face if it stepped in to support Russia’s military aggression in Ukraine. The Biden administration has remained wary over the China-Russia alignment as the West continues to impose sanctions on Moscow over the invasion.

The previous in-person meeting between Blinken and Wang took place in October in Rome.

In June, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin met Chinese Defense Minister Wei Fenghe on the sidelines of the Asia Security Summit in Singapore, known as the Shangri-La Dialogue, in what became their first face-to-face talks since Biden took office last year.

But they traded barbs over Taiwan. The United States has been expressing concerns over Beijing’s military activity near Taiwan and has urged it to cease pressuring the territory.

The Biden administration has been seeking to establish what it calls guardrails, or sufficient channels of communication so that an intensifying competition does not veer into conflict.

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