The U.S. is not asking anyone to choose between the United States and China, but it is demonstrating the benefits of partnership, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Thursday while visiting Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Prince Faisal bin Farhan al-Saud, the Saudi foreign minister, said his country\u2019s partnership with China \u201cis likely to grow.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe United States remains the number one partner of choice\u201d for most countries in the Persian Gulf region, Blinken said during a joint press conference in Riyadh. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Prince Faisal said that while China is his nation\u2019s largest trading partner, his country\u2019s \u201csecurity partnership\u201d with the U.S. \u201cis refreshed on an almost daily basis.\u201d<\/p>\n
Blinken\u2019s remarks came as Washington and Beijing are preparing for the top U.S. diplomat\u2019s upcoming trip to China. The trip was rescheduled from February after\u00a0the U.S. military shot down a suspected Chinese spy balloon that had drifted over the continental United States.<\/p>\n
In a tweet this week, U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns cited White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan\u2019s remarks that the U.S. hopes \u201cBeijing will be willing to include substantive engagement on strategic nuclear issues.\u201d<\/p>\n
Burns has postponed in-person events previously scheduled to be hosted by the Washington-based Hudson Institute on June 12 and the Center for Strategic and International Studies on June 16.<\/p>\n
A U.S. official declined to say whether the postponement was related to Blinken\u2019s expected trip to Beijing.<\/p>\n
During a press briefing earlier this week, VOA asked State Department deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel whether Washington views Beijing as ready to stabilize bilateral ties.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe international community expects us to manage our relationship with the PRC [People\u2019s Republic of China] responsibly,\u201d he said, regardless of whether it is \u201caddressing the climate crisis, a significant portion of the world\u2019s trade flows through the Taiwan Strait, or addressing fentanyl precursors.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chilly reception<\/p>\n
In Beijing, China responded with a cold shoulder.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe U.S. needs to respect China\u2019s core interests and major concerns,\u201d said Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Wang Wenbin during a briefing on Wednesday, urging Washington to \u201cstop calling for communication on the one hand and making provocations on the other.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ties between the world\u2019s two largest economies have been increasingly strained in recent months over issues including trade, technology and regional security. But U.S. agricultural exports to China continue to grow. China is the largest export market for U.S. agricultural products, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s an indication of what trade associations such as the U.S.-China Business Council said both economies should take into account – namely, \u201cthe stabilizing and beneficial role of trade.\u201d<\/p>\n
But critics are skeptical that Blinken\u2019s trip can fundamentally change fraught relations over differences such as human rights.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow [do U.S. President Joe Biden and Blinken] plan to \u2018thaw\u2019 with a [Chinese government] they have accused of committing genocide, #crimesagainsthumanity?\u201d tweeted Human Rights Watch China Director Sophie Richardson. \u201cWhat kind of cooperation can they expect?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Some in Congress say Washington is acceding to Beijing\u2019s demands.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Biden administration so desperately wants to meet with top Chinese officials that it is complying with Beijing’s demand to bury an FBI report\u201d on the suspected Chinese spy balloon, tweeted Republican Senator Bill Hagerty, who is ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee panel on national security and international trade and finance.<\/p>\n
The State Department’s Patel on Monday told reporters there was no public update on Blinken’s China trip but that the United States looked forward to rescheduling that visit “when conditions allow.”<\/p>\n
The Financial Times reported the visit could come this month.<\/p>\n
‘Candid, constructive and fruitful’<\/p>\n
The State Department’s top official for East Asia, Daniel Kritenbrink, and the National Security Council’s senior director for China, Sarah Beran, were in China earlier this week for what Patel described as “candid and productive discussions” with Chinese officials.<\/p>\n
China’s foreign ministry called those talks “candid, constructive and fruitful communication on promoting the improvement of China-U.S. relations and properly managing differences.”<\/p>\n
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin stressed the need for major powers to have open lines of communication last week ahead of a security conference in Singapore. His Chinese counterpart, General Li Shangfu, declined to meet with Austin on the sidelines of the conference, and while the two did shake hands at the forum, Austin said that was “no substitute for a substantive engagement.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The U.S. is not asking anyone to choose between the United States and China, but it is demonstrating the benefits of partnership, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Thursday while visiting Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile, Prince Faisal bin Farhan al-Saud, the Saudi foreign minister, said his country\u2019s partnership with China \u201cis likely to grow.\u201d \u201cThe […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":495,"featured_media":5682,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[141],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobbinghood.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobbinghood.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobbinghood.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobbinghood.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/495"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobbinghood.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10082"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jobbinghood.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10082\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobbinghood.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobbinghood.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobbinghood.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobbinghood.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}