US and European allies must ‘maximise alignment’ to confront China, White House official says
- Western nations find broad agreement on human rights, but there is divergence on some other issues, says US National Security Council’s top China official
- US pledges to ‘stand together against the coercive and otherwise problematic behaviours that we see from Beijing on the economic front’
As the United States and its European allies craft a coordinated approach to handling relations with China, both sides must do a better job at understanding and resolving areas of divergence, the White House National Security Council’s top China official said on Thursday.
Speaking in the wake of G7 and Nato summits in which the China issue featured prominently, Laura Rosenberger said the meetings had demonstrated broad convergence especially around human rights issues, but acknowledged that alignment was not absolute.
“The reality is that we’re never going to have 100 per cent convergence with any of our allies on anything,” Rosenberger said at a virtual event hosted by the Washington-based Wilson Centre. “The key for me is maximising our alignment, and where we have divergence, understanding it and managing it.”
While Rosenberger did not elaborate in detail on specific areas of divergence, she suggested that there was not yet complete convergence between Washington and European capitals on their approaches to the Indo-Pacific – a priority arena for the US government – though she said that there was “movement” towards greater alignment there.
02:06
Biden says G7 leaders agreed to call out China over human rights abuses in Xinjiang and Hong Kong
Noting the “deep economic ties” that both the US and European countries have with China, Rosenberger said it was “important for us to understand ways that we can better support one another … in terms of resolving some of the areas where we’ve maybe been sort of opposed to one another, instead of actually supporting one another”.