China-US relations: ties still competitive despite being ‘notably stabilised’, US ambassador says

Name: ‘China will not challenge or replace the US’, Xi tells Blinken at crucial meeting
Uploaded: 2024-01-19T06:35:08.000Z
Duration: 2 min 49 s
Description: ‘China will not challenge or replace the US’, Xi tells Blinken at crucial meeting

Nicholas Burns addresses Lunar New Year gala hosted by the China General Chamber of Commerce on the state of bilateral relationship

Xu Xueyuan, deputy chief of mission and minister at China’s embassy, says ‘win-win cooperation’ is ‘only correct way’ for US and China to get along

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US Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns has told American and Chinese business communities that keeping “sensitive” technology out of China and re-routing the flow of critical minerals made “great sense” for the US. Photo: AFP

Khushboo Razdan

Published: 2:35pm, 19 Jan 2024Updated: 9:07pm, 19 Jan 2024

Senior American and Chinese officials offered contrasting visions for the future of US-China ties at an annual gathering of both countries’ business communities in New York late on Thursday.

In a video address from Beijing, Nicholas Burns, the US ambassador to China, said that even though the bilateral relationship had “notably stabilised” since President Xi Jinping’s meeting with his US counterpart Joe Biden in San Francisco in November, it remained “competitive”.

“There will always be a competitive relationship between our two countries,” he said, adding that the two global military and economic powers were now “better connected” amid “major differences”.

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

Burns was addressing a Lunar New Year gala hosted by the China General Chamber of Commerce, a New York-based non-profit organisation that works to promote US-China business cooperation.

He made clear that Washington was unwilling to “compromise” on national security and stressed that keeping “sensitive” technology such as advanced chips out of China and re-routing the flow of critical minerals “much closer to home” made “great sense” for the United States.

However, he reiterated that the US was not trying to decouple from the world’s second-largest economy as well as one of its top trading partners and export markets for agriculture products.

The comments followed a speech by Xu Xueyuan, the deputy chief of mission and minister at the Chinese embassy in the US, who called “win-win cooperation” the “only correct way” for the US and China to get along.