In Blinken talks, China’s Wang Yi calls for Apec summit reset to US Indo-Pacific strategy

The November forum in San Francisco is an ‘important opportunity’ to reconsider the contentious policy, China’s senior diplomat says
In his three-hour meeting with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Wang strikes cordial tone on bilateral cooperation in the region

US-China relations

Laura Zhou

Published: 3:20pm, 20 Jun, 2023

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China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, has urged the US to recalibrate its Indo-Pacific strategy before this year’s Apec summit if Washington wants to build up healthy interactions with Beijing in the strategically important region.

In his highly anticipated talks with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday, Wang said the strategy was “essentially an attempt to introduce great power rivalry in the Asia-Pacific region and create a confrontation between camps”.

The United States will play host to the leaders of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in November, giving Washington an “important opportunity to reconsider and recalibrate” the Indo-Pacific strategy, according to Wang.

During the roughly three-hour meeting with Blinken in Beijing, Wang accused Washington of “changing the status quo of peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific region [and] undermining the harmony of Asia-Pacific countries as neighbours”.

US policies were also “distorting the production and supply chain in the region and weakening the Asean-centred regional cooperation framework”, Wang said, according to a Chinese foreign ministry statement issued late on Monday night.

But Wang – President Xi Jinping’s most senior foreign policy adviser – struck a cordial tone as he called for bilateral cooperation in the region, which Beijing regards as crucial to its strategic interests because of its geographical proximity to China.

Blinken visit to China could be a success even without breakthroughs: analysts

“China is willing to explore with the United States ways of positive interaction in the Asia-Pacific region and hopes that the United States will play its role as host and work with China to bring Asia-Pacific cooperation back in the right direction,” he said.

The US’ Indo-Pacific strategy has been a pillar of US foreign policy since it was announced by then president Donald Trump in 2017 at an Apec summit in Vietnam. It aims to promote economic and security cooperation in a region stretching from the west coast of the US to the western shores of India.

The Biden administration retained and developed the strategy as part of its efforts to strengthen partnerships with like-minded countries to counter China’s expanding influence in the region.

Beijing has consistently rejected the Indo-Pacific concept, which it regards as a strategy of containment aimed at curtailing China’s regional and global ambitions, and an attempt by Washington to encircle China.

While the Biden administration insists that it is not seeking to contain China, Chinese officials have repeatedly voiced opposition to the strategy, which they worry could compromise Beijing’s interests, particularly in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait – regarded as the most likely flashpoints between the two powers.

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‘China will not challenge or replace the US’, Xi tells Blinken at crucial meeting

Blinken, Washington’s top diplomat, is also the most senior US official to visit China in five years. His two-day trip to Beijing was widely considered as the latest attempt by the two sides to stabilise a relationship that many fear could fall off the rails into war.

There have been hopes that Blinken’s visit could pave the way for more high-level engagement and perhaps set the stage for meetings between Xi and Biden at this year’s multilateral summits, including the Apec forum in San Francisco.

Blinken also had a meeting on Monday afternoon with Xi, who said Beijing would “not challenge or replace the US”, but that the US should “respect China”.