Washington is “ready to talk” with Beijing, US Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns said on Tuesday, calling on Beijing to “meet us halfway” to stabilize the relationship after years of tension.
“Our view is that we need better channels between the two governments and deeper channels, and we’re ready to talk, and it’s particularly important to talk, of course, when you have big problems,” Burns said at an online event at the Stimson Center.
“We have never been shy to speak up, and we hope that the Chinese will meet us halfway on this.”
Diplomatic communication has been significantly reduced amid deteriorating relations between Washington and Beijing under two consecutive US administrations over disputes over trade, technology, human rights and Taiwan. TO Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to the self-governing island China claims as its own to Taiwan in August further strained ties.
Burns said that “access for all of us in the US government.” to his Chinese counterparts, including members of President Joe Biden’s cabinet, “he’s really been up and down over the last year.”
Beijing shut down eight different channels of contact with the US immediately after Pelosi left Taipei, “including three of our most important military channels… and the Chinese didn’t want to talk to us,” Burns said in the online meeting.
However, after the Chinese Communist Party’s National Congress in October, Burns said he had “good” meetings with top Chinese foreign affairs officials Qin Gang and Wang Yi.
In November, Biden met with his counterpart, Xi Jinping, in Bali, Indonesia, ahead of the G20 summit, which Burns called “a very good and productive exchange.”
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was scheduled for a long-awaited visit to Beijing on February 5 to further mend the relationship. However, he postponed it two days before the trip after a giant Chinese “surveillance” balloon flew over the US before being shot down by a fighter jet.
Burns did not say when Blinken’s trip to China would be rescheduled, except that it would occur “when conditions are appropriate for his visit.”
“What we really need is more broad-based engagement at the cabinet level… and it’s hard for me to predict at this point when this kind of engagement will happen again, but we’ve never supported a cherry on top of this relationship,” Burns told the meeting. virtually from Beijing.
The United States and China are also at odds over Beijing’s support for Russia in Ukraine, as well as Chinese military incursions near Taiwan and in the South China Sea.
Climate negotiations continue
Burns said that environment-related talks between John Kerry, Biden’s special envoy on climate, and Xie Zhenhua, the Chinese climate negotiator, have been ongoing and “they work together … very effectively.”
“That doesn’t mean they always agree. But I think both governments want to work to see if we can achieve the UN goal of limiting the average global rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius,” Burns added.
China is the world’s largest carbon emitter, responsible for around 30% of global emissions, while the US comes in second with around 10%. Burns said the two governments have a vested interest in working together on the climate issue.
Burns agreed that the relationship between the United States and China has always been “complicated.”
“It’s very competitive and it’s very important to the United States for obvious reasons,” Burns said. He said his tenure, which began 14 months earlier, “has seen a continuation of all of that: a rocky relationship where we’re trying to stabilize the ties between us, deepen the channels between us.”
In recent weeks, Burns said, “there has been constant communication between me and senior officials at the Foreign Office, my colleagues in the US mission and their counterparts at the Foreign Office here.”
The United States would also like China to pressure Russia to end its war in Ukraine, Burns said, adding that the recent phone call between Xi and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was “a good first step.”
“It would be useful if China pressured Russia to stop bombing Ukrainian schools, Ukrainian hospitals and Ukrainian apartment buildings.”
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