US remains focused on China, despite Russian invasion: Blinken
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Washington: Though the US keeps going at Russia in every global platform, China tops their agenda.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday said Russian invasion of Ukraine was an immediate threat.
However, the US never ceased focusing on China as the most serious and long-term challenge, he said laying out Biden administration's China policy.
Secretary Blinken said Beijing had been undermining the very international rules, laws and institutions that enabled its emergence and rise.
Under President Xi Jinping, he said, the ruling Chinese Communist Party had become more repressive at home and more aggressive abroad.
"Russian President Vladimir Putin poses a clear and present threat and attacking Ukraine three months ago he also attacked the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity enshrined in the UN Charter to protect all countries from being conquered or coerced," the secretary of state said.
Even as President Putin's war continues, he said, the US will focus on the most serious, long term challenge to the international order posed by the People's Republic of China.
"China's the only country with both the intent to reshape the international order, and increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military and technological power to do it" he added.
The United States is not seeking conflict or a new cold war and it also does not want to block China's rise as a global political or economic power, the top US diplomat made clear.
Blinken denounced what he said Xi-led China's repressive measures at home and aggressive behavior abroad and its "no limits" pact with Putin's Russia just before the Ukraine invasion.
The US will, therefore, "shape the strategic environment around Beijing to advance our vision for an open, inclusive international system", he added.
The much-awaited China policy by the Biden administration, according to Blinken, would stand on three pillars: invest, align and compete.
While competing with China, the US will invest to restore America's leadership in invention and innovation, work with its network of allies in the Indo-Pacific and around the world.
As for Taiwan, the US policy would remain unchanged, he said, which could invoke President Biden's remark that America would intervene if Taiwan was attacked by China.
Source: IANS