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Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, warned China that Washington would hold Beijing accountable for its abuses, in the first high-level interaction between the countries since Joe Biden became president.
After a call with Yang Jiechi, China’s top foreign policy official, Blinken said he had told his counterpart that the Biden administration will uphold democratic values and hold Beijing to account.
“I made it clear that the United States will defend our national interests, defend our democratic values and hold Beijing accountable for its abuses of the international system.” Blinken tweeted Friday night in Washington.
The state department said it told Yang that the United States would pressure China on its human rights record in the Xinjiang and Tibet regions and in Hong Kong. He also urged Beijing to condemn the military coup in Myanmar.
Blinken added that Biden would work with his allies to hold China “accountable for its efforts to threaten stability in the Indo-Pacific, including. . . the Taiwan Strait and its weakening of the international rules-based system ”.
China’s official reading of the call gave little indication of Blinken’s criticism. He said Yang urged the United States to correct what it described as recent mistakes, “act constructively” in Asia Pacific and not interfere in Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong.
“No one can stop the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” Yang told Blinken, according to a statement on the website of the Chinese Foreign Ministry.
Blinken’s warning follows a series of harsh statements from the Biden administration over the past two weeks suggesting that the new president intends to pursue a tough policy toward Beijing.
Speaking at the State Department this week, Biden said that “the US leadership must confront this new moment of advancing authoritarianism, including China’s growing ambitions to rival the United States.”
In a virtual address to a US audience on Monday, Yang blamed the sorry state of US-China relations on the recent Trump administration, saying ties between the countries had reached a “key moment.”
While expressing his desire for the two countries to improve relations in a speech to the National Committee on US-China Relations, he warned Washington not to cross any “red lines” and told Biden’s team not to interfere in Chinese policy towards Hong Kong. , Tibet and Xinjiang.
Since Biden’s inauguration, his team has called the crackdown on Uighurs in northwestern Xinjiang province “genocide” and has told China to stop intimidating Taiwan after Chinese fighter jets and bombers entered the country’s air defense zone and simulate attacks against a group of US aircraft carriers. .
The White House has stressed that it will take a patient approach to its policy toward China and consult with its allies in an effort to devise a more coordinated way to address the challenges posed by China.
Jake Sullivan, a national security adviser, said last week that Biden was prepared to “impose costs for what China is doing in Xinjiang, for what it is doing in Hong Kong, for the bellicosity and threats that it projects towards Taiwan.”
Before Biden’s inauguration, Sullivan also criticized China for attacking freedom in Hong Kong with its campaign to suppress the city’s pro-democracy movement by arresting dozens of peaceful activists.
In another sign that Biden will maintain a vigilant posture toward China, the USS John McCain, a warship, sailed through international waters in the Taiwan Strait this week, the first such move under the new administration.
The People’s Liberation Army Southern Theater Command on Saturday accused the ship of disturbing the “positive atmosphere” in the South China Sea while sailing near the Spratly Islands, which China claims as the Nansha Islands, after leaving the Strait of Taiwan
Additional information from Christian Shepherd in Beijing
Follow Demetri Sebastopulo On twitter
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