Xi Jinping calls on US to stop ‘saying one thing and doing another’ during meeting with Blinken: China: Business Times

Chinese President Xi Jinping met with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Beijing on Friday, concluding Blinken’s three-day visit to China aimed at stabilizing the tense relationship between the two superpowers. During the meeting, Xi warned the United States against treating China as an enemy and urged Washington to “be true to their words” and stop “saying one thing and doing another.”

“Our two countries must be true to their words,” Xi said, according to Chinese state broadcaster CCTV. “We must help each other prosper, and not harm each other.” The Chinese leader, who has been repeatedly called a “dictator” by US President Joe Biden, acknowledged that while there has been communication and some positive progress in some areas, many questions remain unresolved and there is room for further improvement in the relationship .

Blinken, who also met with top Chinese diplomat Wang Yi earlier in the day, emphasized that the United States wants to manage competition with China responsibly. “We discussed areas of disagreement, in addition to areas of shared interest – such as combating drugs – where we can build on progress to realize benefits for both our peoples,” Blinken said on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter .

The foreign minister’s visit comes amid rising tensions between the two countries, with China expressing frustration over recent US efforts to strengthen alliances with Japan and the Philippines in the South and East China Seas , providing military support to Taiwan and imposing technological restrictions on the Chinese. access to advanced semiconductors.

During his meeting with Wang Yi, Blinken emphasized the importance of personal diplomacy to move the relationship forward and avoid misunderstandings and miscalculations. For his part, Wang noted that as the US-China relationship began to stabilize, “negative factors” were on the rise, with China’s “legitimate development rights” being “unreasonably suppressed” and facing challenges to China’s core interests were made.

“Should China and the United States continue to move in the right direction and move forward with stability or return to a downward spiral?” Wang asked, calling it an “important question” for the two countries.

Blinken later described his meeting with Wang, which lasted more than three hours, as “extensive and constructive.” According to a State Department briefing, the two men discussed the next steps of a series of commitments Xi and Biden made at their California summit in November, including counter-narcotics cooperation, military-to-military communications , conversations about artificial intelligence risks and security. and facilitating exchanges between people. Blinken announced that the US and China would hold their first talks on artificial intelligence in the coming weeks.

A primary purpose of Blinken’s visit was to warn China about its support for Russia’s war against Ukraine, which began weeks after Moscow and Beijing declared a “no borders” partnership in 2022. While China does not appear to be providing Russia with lethal assistance, Blinken said it was supplying machine tools, microelectronics and other dual-use items that make it the “top supplier” to Russia’s defense industrial base.

“Russia would struggle to continue its attack on Ukraine without China’s support,” he said.

Other issues on the agenda included Chinese economic and trade practices that the US considers unfair, Chinese aggression in the South China Sea, stability in the Taiwan Strait, North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs and the war between Israel and Hamas.

Despite the challenges, Blinken expressed the U.S. desire for China’s economy to grow, but emphasized that “the way China grows matters.” He called for a “healthy economic relationship in which American workers and companies are treated equally and fairly” and expressed concern about China’s unfair trade practices and the risk that Chinese industrial overcapacity in key industries would flood U.S. and other markets with Chinese Products.

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