Source : NEW INDIAN EXPRESS NEWS
At one point he warned bluntly that if China does not end support for Russia ’s defense industrial sector, something the Biden administration says has allowed Russia to step up its attacks on Ukraine and threaten European security, the U.S. would act to stop it. “I made clear that if China does not address this problem, we will,” Blinken told reporters after meeting with Xi.
Chinese officials were similarly direct, saying that while relations have generally improved since a low point last year over the shootdown of a Chinese surveillance balloon, they remained fraught.
“The two countries should help each other succeed rather than hurt each other, seek common ground and reserve differences rather than engage in vicious competition, and honor words with actions rather than say one thing but do the opposite,” Xi told Blinken in a not-so-veiled accusation of U.S. hypocrisy.
Wang, the foreign minister, said China is fed up with what it considers to be U.S. meddling in human rights, Taiwan and the South China Sea and efforts to restrict its trade and relations with other countries. “Negative factors in the relationship are still increasing and building and the relationship is facing all kinds of disruptions,” he said. He urged the U.S. “not to step on China’s red lines on China’s sovereignty, security, and development interests.”
Or, as Yang Tao, the director general of North American and Oceania affairs at the Foreign Ministry, put it, according to the official Xinhua News Agency: “If the United States always regards China as its main rival, China-US relations will continuously face troubles and many problems.”
Still, Blinken pressed engagement on all levels. He announced a new agreement to hold talks with China on the threats posed by artificial intelligence but lamented a dearth of American students studying in China – fewer than 900 now, compared to more than 290,000 Chinese in the U.S. He said both sides wanted to increase that number.
“We have an interest in this, because if our future leaders – whether it’s in government, whether it’s in business, civil society, climate, tech, and other fields – if they’re going to be able to collaborate, if they want to be able to solve big problems, if they’re going to be able to work through our differences, they’ll need to know and understand each other’s language, culture, history,” he said. But he added a caveat the Chinese were likely to see as a barb.
“What I told my PRC counterparts on this visit is if they want to attract more Americans here to China, particularly students, the best way to do that is to create the conditions that allow learning to flourish anywhere – a free and open discussion of ideas, access to a wide range of information, ease of travel, confidence in the safety, security, and privacy of the participants,” Blinken said.
Those are issues that neither Taylor Swift nor Dou Wei can overcome.
SOURCE :- NEW INDIAN EXPRESS
