Blinken and a Top Chinese Official in Talks on U.S.-China Tensions
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken pressed his Chinese counterpart Saturday on areas of sharp disagreement between the two nations, including China’s support of Russia’s military industrial sector, the State Department said in a statement.
Mr. Blinken met with the Chinese official, Wang Yi, on the sidelines of an annual international conference of Southeast Asian nations in the Laotian capital of Vientiane. Also in attendance was Sergey V. Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, who at one group session blamed the United States for provoking Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, a senior State Department official told reporters traveling with Mr. Blinken.
In their meeting, Mr. Wang listened to Mr. Blinken’s criticisms, but said that China has not sent weapons to Russia, said the State Department official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to candidly describe diplomatic talks. Mr. Blinken was starting his most ambitious tour of Asia, flying to six countries in a week.
President Biden and his aides have recently accused China of helping Russia rebuild its defense industrial sector, mainly through the export to Russia by Chinese companies of machine tools and microelectronics that have helped the Russian army persist in its war in Ukraine.
Mr. Blinken told Mr. Wang that defending Ukraine against Russia’s aggression was a “core interest” of the United States, using a term that Chinese officials often deploy to signal their own national priorities, the State Department official said.
Mr. Wang said that China’s approach to Ukraine has been transparent, and that it was working to promote peace and dialogue, according to a summary of the meeting in Vientiane by the Chinese Foreign Ministry. Mr. Wang said the United States should stop imposing sanctions, and that China would not bow to “pressure and blackmail.”
The U.S. government has imposed sanctions on more than 300 Chinese entities as a result, but the Chinese government still has not curbed the exports, the State Department official said. He added that Mr. Blinken presented specific examples of the exports, though the official declined to go into detail on that part of the conversation.
Mr. Blinken also said the two countries could try to make more progress on strengthening high-level military talks and on working together to counter the narcotics trade. During a summit meeting last November outside San Francisco, Mr. Biden and Xi Jinping, China’s leader, had agreed that both areas held potential for cooperation.
Mr. Wang noted that some officials from the two countries who worked on specific issues, such as law enforcement and climate change, had maintained open communications recently. But he said the United States “has not stopped its containment and suppression of China, and has even intensified it,” the summary of the meeting by the Chinese Foreign Ministry said.
The two officials also discussed the Gaza war, and Mr. Blinken raised separate issues involving North Korea and Myanmar. Mr. Blinken highlighted human rights issues in Tibet and Hong Kong, and Chinese military actions around Taiwan and in the South China Sea. Both officials noted that the Philippines and China had recently reached an agreement on naval activity that could help lower tensions over the Second Thomas Shoal, a contested area where Philippine marines are posted aboard a grounded ship, the Sierra Madre, resting atop a submerged reef.
The State Department official said that Mr. Wang did not ask about or comment on the upcoming November elections in the United States, which was shaken up by President Biden’s decision to drop out of the race and throw his support to Kamala Harris, the vice president, as the Democratic nominee to challenge Donald J. Trump in November. Mr. Wang did note that Mr. Xi values his relationship with Mr. Biden, the official said.
Mr. Blinken and Mr. Wang attended other meetings on Saturday on the sidelines of an annual conference of foreign ministers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which has 10 member countries. The top diplomats from other world powers, including the United States, China and Russia, also regularly attend. Laos is the host of the group’s various conferences and leadership summit this year.
Mr. Blinken did not arrive in Vientiane until Saturday morning. He left Washington a day later than he had originally planned, after Mr. Biden agreed to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel on Thursday at the White House.
Because of that, Mr. Blinken’s aides had to scramble to compress his schedule, and he spent only a few hours in total at the conference in Vientiane before flying to Hanoi, Vietnam, for meetings there and to visit the family of Nguyen Phu Trong, the Communist Party general secretary who recently died. Mr. Blinken had missed the funeral because of his delayed departure from Washington. On Saturday night, Mr. Blinken gave the family a ceremonial fruit basket in their home, lit an incense stick and stood in prayer in front of an altar.
The forced scheduling change and shortening of Mr. Blinken’s Asia trip is emblematic of a tension at the heart of American foreign policy. Though U.S. leaders argue their nation is a Pacific power that can compete with China in Asia, the reality is that world crises — in particular the wars in Ukraine and Gaza — have absorbed much of their attention in the past year.
Since the start of the Israel-Gaza conflict last October, Mr. Blinken has made more trips to the Middle East than to any other region of the world, despite President Biden’s desire since the start of his administration to push the Middle East down on his list of foreign policy priorities.
Before meeting with Mr. Wang on Saturday, Mr. Blinken sought to make the case that the United States remained committed to Asia across economic, diplomatic and military realms. He had separate group meetings with foreign ministers from East Asia and those from Southeast Asia; took part in discussions among diplomats of the United States and Mekong River nations; and spoke to the leaders of Laos, which, like China and Vietnam, is ruled by a Communist Party.
At the start of his meeting with Saleumxay Kommasith, the foreign minister and deputy prime minister of Laos, Mr. Blinken praised efforts to deepen the U.S.-Laos relationship, and he said the United States wanted to ensure its “comprehensive strategic partnership” with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations “really fully takes flight, and we’re working very hard on that.”
The State Department said in a vague summary of the meeting that Mr. Blinken stressed the American government’s “shared vision of an Indo-Pacific that is free, open, connected, prosperous, secure, and resilient.”
That is coded language that U.S. officials use to signal disapproval of policies by China in the region, including its ambitious territorial claims in the South and East China Seas and maritime aggressions by coast guard vessels and other ships.
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