Image: Reuters Berita 24 English - On Saturday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that China had taken "irresponsible steps&...
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| Image: Reuters |
Berita 24 English - On Saturday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that China had taken "irresponsible steps" by cutting off key lines of communication with Washington. He also said that China's actions in Taiwan showed that it was moving away from focusing on peaceful solutions and toward using force.
Chinese aircraft and warships practised an attack on Taiwan on Saturday, island officials said. This was one of a number of steps Beijing took after U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited earlier this week.
Blinken told a news conference in Manila that China's move to stop bilateral work in eight key areas, including defence, drugs, transnational crime, and climate change, was a way to punish the whole world, not just the U.S.
"These include a number of military-to-military channels, which are essential to avoid misunderstandings and crises," he explained.
"Stopping climate cooperation doesn't hurt the U.S., but it hurts the rest of the world, especially developing countries. We shouldn't let differences between our two countries stop us from working together on things that are important to the whole world."
The United States and China, which are the two biggest emitters of greenhouse gases, have worked together a lot on climate change.
Blinken said that the U.S. had heard from allies that they were worried about what he called China's dangerous and unstable actions around Taiwan, but that the U.S. would not change how it dealt with the situation.
He said that he had told China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi at a regional meeting in Cambodia that the United States was determined to keep communication channels open to avoid mistakes, as countries all over the world expected them to.
"Let me be clear: the U.S. does not think that escalating the situation is in the best interests of Taiwan, the region, or our own national security," he said.
"We'll keep our lines of communication with China open so that misunderstandings or miscommunications don't make things worse."
He added: "When tensions are high, it might be even more important to keep talking to each other... We want to bring these tensions down. And we think that dialogue is a big part of that."
