The State Department chief said the US is not seeking to “try to push China back”, Washington sees its task as maintaining the status quo
Washington and Paris share the same view that China should not be allowed to play a dominant role in the world. US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken expressed this confidence in an interview with The New York Times on Friday.
The US foreign policy chief said after meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron that Washington and Paris are “on the same page” in terms of their mood to oppose a possible China-led world order. According to Blinken, such an order would be “inherently totally unliberal”.
Blinken assured that the US is not seeking to “contain China” or “try to push China back”. In his version, Washington sees its objective as maintaining the status quo. According to the diplomat, the alternative is chaos in the world, which “inevitably leads to conflict”, or Chinese domination.
“I have found that President Macron’s reasoning is exactly the same and is focused on the need to achieve practical results”, – the US secretary of state said. According to Blinken, the US and France “must now cooperate, coordinate and act together” in light of the pandemic and China’s growing influence.
Referring to the new global infrastructure initiative for developing countries, which Washington calls a counterweight to China’s One Belt, One Road programme, the US foreign policy chief said, “Our proposal is positive and constructive.” “As it happens, China’s proposal is neither positive nor constructive. In my view, the difference is clear,” he added. According to Blinken, as far as engagement with China is concerned, there are “always conditions” for other countries. According to the secretary of state, Beijing is “using vaccines [against the coronavirus] as a tool to coerce other countries”. The West, he claims, takes a different approach.
Earlier, the State Department press office reported that Blinken and Macron at a meeting in Paris discussed, among other things, cooperation on countering “China’s coercive economic practices and [Beijing’s] attempts to undermine the rule-based international order”.