If China fails to intervene in North Korea, US will take action, says Antony Blinken
- Top American diplomat warns that Beijing must help denuclearise Pyongyang or else Washington will bolster its defence alliances with Seoul and Tokyo
- US aims to steady its relationship with China and ‘make sure that the competition we’re clearly in does not veer into conflict’, Blinken says
Directing his remarks at China during a fireside chat at the Aspen Security Forum in the US state of Colorado, Blinken said: “We believe that you have unique influence and we hope that you’ll use it to get better cooperation from North Korea.
“But if you can’t or if you won’t, then we’re going to have to continue to take steps that aren’t directed at China but that China probably won’t like because it goes to strengthening and shoring up not only our own defences but also those of South Korea and Japan and a deepening of the work that all three of us are doing together.”
China, North Korea’s Communist neighbour, has offered it fuel and food aid in the past and brokered international dialogue on the country’s militarisation.
The secretary of state said he had no updates on King’s whereabouts but that “there are certainly concerns” he might be subjected to torture in North Korea.
China won’t ‘embolden’ North Korea even as it eyes deeper ties amid security crisis
“It was important for us to put some stability back into this relationship, to put a floor under it, to make sure that the competition we’re clearly in does not veer into conflict, and that starts with engagement,” the diplomat said.
“If we weren’t engaged, we would be rightfully tagged with being irresponsible,” he said.
The email accounts of Washington’s ambassador to Beijing and the State Department’s top official overseeing East Asia and the Pacific were reportedly breached, according to sourced cited by CNN and The Wall Street Journal.
“What we’ve had on occasion to share more than once with China is the concern that anything targeting the government, targeting citizens, targeting companies is a real concern for us,” said Blinken.
“We will in the future, as necessary, take appropriate action.”
Beijing’s state-run China Daily on July 13 called the US “the world’s biggest hacking empire and global cyber thief” and said the current hacking allegation “only reeks of the US’s old game of tarnishing China’s image”.
The annual Aspen Security Forum is a foreign policy conference organised by the Aspen Strategy Group, a policy institute.