Blinken: Military confrontation goes against US, China interests

Washington, May 2 (EFE).- United States State Secretary Antony Blinken said the possibility of a military confrontation between the US and China “goes profoundly against” the interests of both countries, adding that Washington wants to maintain a “rules-based” world order.

“I think it is deeply against the interests of both China and the United States to get to that point, or even to go in that direction,” Blinken said in a CBS’s News interview broadcast Sunday.

Blinken said what has been witnessed in recent years “is that China acts more repressively at home and more aggressive abroad.”

“It is the only country in the world that has the military, economic and diplomatic capacity to undermine the rule-based order that worries us so much and we are determined to defend,” said Blinken, who will meet United Kingdom Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab on Monday ahead of Tuesday’s G7 foreign ministers’ summit.

“Our purpose is not to contain China, repress it, limit it. It is to maintain this rule-based order that China is challenging,” said the diplomat, who again denounced what he called a genocide taking place against the Uighur minority in the northwestern Xinjiang province.

“More than a million people have been interned in, choose your term, concentration camps, reeducation camps, internment camps. When Beijing says, ‘Oh, there is a terrorist threat,’ we don’t see it. It doesn’t come from a million people,” he said.

In his first speech at a joint session of the House of Representatives and the Senate, US President Joe Biden said Wednesday that he does not seek “conflict” with China, but does welcome “competition.”

Biden said the US will not tolerate “unfair” trade practices by China that harm American workers and that his country will remain firm in its commitment to defend human rights worldwide, including in China, which considers such attempts. as an interference from Washington.

Relations between China and the US deteriorated dramatically during President Donald Trump’s term (2017-2021) with commercial, diplomatic or technological conflict. Although Biden promised a different approach, tensions between the two nations have remained. EFE

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