Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi accused the United States of trying to contain China rather than improve relations, and said it was using Taiwan to do so, as he held talks with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. The remarks by Wang during a telephone call with Blinken on Tuesday offered the latest signal that Beijing wants Washington to change its policies towards China before seeking further cooperation. The situation involving Ukraine and Russia was high on the agenda, with Blinken emphasising the need to preserve its sovereignty and territorial integrity, and Wang saying all parties should exercise caution and resolve the crisis through dialogue. The Chinese foreign ministry’s statement also said Blinken congratulated Beijing on its hosting of the Winter Olympics – despite Washington staging a diplomatic boycott of the event. But the US statement about the phone call made no mention of the Games. Beijing’s statement put greater emphasis, however, on the tensions facing China and the US. It described the US’ recently unveiled new Indo-Pacific strategy as an attempt to contain China. “The new Indo-Pacific strategy laid out by the US recently publicly listed China as the top regional challenge, and attempted to include Taiwan in its regional strategy to contain China,” Wang told Blinken, according to the foreign ministry’s statement. “This is obviously sending a wrong signal of containment of China.” The strategy, released last week, said the US would deter military aggression against both itself and its partners in the region, including across the Taiwan Strait. It outlined possible measures Washington would take to enhance regional security, including the development of “a more resilient force posture”. “There is competition and cooperation between China and the United States,” Wang was quoted as saying. “We cannot simply use competition to define bilateral relations. Some US officials have advocated a long-term and fierce competition with China, which is likely to evolve into a full-scale confrontation. “China urges the US side to take concrete actions to honour the commitments made by President [Joe] Biden, rather than saying one thing yet doing the opposite.” Wang said he hoped the US would adopt a “pragmatic perception of China” and relations could be put back on track. It was the second time in weeks that Wang had lashed out at the US for not changing its policies towards Beijing. In a previous phone call with Blinken in late January, Wang said relations were experiencing “new shocks”, two months after a virtual summit between the two countries’ presidents. In that conversation, Wang said that Biden’s remarks to Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping during the summit had not been put into practice. According to Beijing, Biden had said to Xi that the US did not seek a new cold war, while a White House statement said that Biden had underscored the importance of ensuring their competition did not veer into conflict. In the latest phone call, Wang talked up the significance of the upcoming 50th anniversary of the Shanghai Communique, which stated the intention of both nations to normalise relations. The two countries will organise a series of joint events next week to mark the 50th anniversary of Richard Nixon’s historic visit in 1972 . The visit had ended a diplomatic freeze during which communication had been cut off since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 and subsequent Korean war.