West must be ‘very careful’ about Chinese investment, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken says

Blinken tells BBC that the US is not trying to hold back China but wants to uphold the rules-based international order

Countries should take extra care with investments in strategic assets and industries, America’s top diplomat says

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Antony Blinken at a press conference in London after the G7 meeting. Photo: AFP

Published: 4:17pm, 6 May 2021Updated: 10:44pm, 6 May 2021

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the West had to be very careful about the exact nature of Chinese investment in Western economies and think very carefully about investments in strategic assets.

China’s spectacular economic and military rise over the past 40 years is among the most significant geopolitical events of recent history, alongside the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union.

The West has struggled to come up with an agreed policy on China and has flip-flopped over the years from seeing China as a lucrative source of investment – for example in US government bonds – to seeing China as a threat to global stability and avoiding its 5G technology.

Asked by the BBC if the West should pull back from Chinese investment, Blinken said the United States was not trying to hold China back or contain it but the West wanted to uphold the rules-based international order formed after World War Two.

“I think we have to be very careful about exactly what the nature is of that investment,” Blinken told the BBC in an interview when asked about huge amounts of Chinese investment in the West.

“If it is investing in strategic industries, strategic assets that’s something that countries need to look at very carefully.”

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