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SECRETARY BLINKEN: In Asia, we have the most consequential and in many ways complicated relationship with China. It can’t be defined on a bumper sticker, but we’ve approached it from a position of strength – the aspects where we’re competitive, the aspects where we’re cooperative, the aspects where we’re contesting. And that strength has to do with the fact that there’s now greater convergence than at any time I can remember between us, key partners in Europe, key partners in Asia, and in other places on approaching some of the challenges posed by China. I just came back, as you noted, from there, and I think that’s very much something that they see and understand.
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MR BRENDE: When you were in China, you raised a lot of questions to the Chinese leadership. You met with President Xi Jinping and, of course, your counterpart, Foreign Minister Wang Yi. One thing I saw you also asked China to nudge Iran when it comes to this crisis, because we are very close to a full escalation two weeks ago between Israel and Iran. We avoided that, but what was the response when you raised this with Wang Yi to nudge Iran?
SECRETARY BLINKEN: Well, two things. First, Borge, as you said, we did come very close to an escalation, a spread of the conflict. And I think because of very focused, very determined efforts, we’ve been able to avoid it, and that’s hugely important. And this is something we’ve been on since day one, trying to make sure that even as we work to resolve Gaza, we don’t see this conflict spread to other places in the region.
Second, with regard to China, they have a clear, obvious interest in stability in the Middle East. They obviously depend on the region for energy resources. There are many vital trading partners here —
MR BRENDE: Ninety percent of their oil comes – 90 percent of the Iranian oil, I think, is bought by China.
SECRETARY BLINKEN: Exactly. Yeah, well, there’s that too, which is another challenge. But you start with the premise that they have an interest in stability here. They also have relationships; they have influence. And so the question that I raised with our Chinese counterparts is: Given that, we would urge you to use the influence, because it’s in your interest. And also, it’s something that other countries would look to China to do. So I think we’ve seen some examples of that, and that’s a positive thing. But, again, it goes to their own self-interest.
MR BRENDE: Yeah, because I think China played a role in the rapprochement between the kingdom and Iran even if – I think you were part of it too, but China played a role in it.
SECRETARY BLINKEN: They did, and it’s something that we – that we supported, because, again, if we can find through diplomacy ways to ease tensions and to avoid any conflict, that’s a good thing. And to the extent China can play a constructive role in advancing that, that’s good too.
MR BRENDE: I think you had other topics that you raised with Wang Yi too. One of them was your concern over China’s support for Russia’s defense industry. What did Wang Yi respond to that one?
SECRETARY BLINKEN: Well, I raised this both with my counterpart Wang Yi as well as with President Xi directly, and let’s understand what’s going on. We have engaged with China from the start of the Russian aggression against Ukraine and urged them not to provide Russia with arms, with weapons that would fuel the aggression. And I think it’s fair to say that China has not directly supplied Russia with weapons, with missiles, with munitions. Iran is doing it; North Korea is doing it. However, what China is doing is providing invaluable support to Russia’s defense industrial base that’s helping Russia deal with the mass oppression that’s been exerted through sanctions, through export controls, and other measures.
If you look at what Russia’s done over the last year in terms of its production of munitions, missiles, tanks, and armored vehicles, it’s produced them at a faster pace than at any time in its modern history, including during the Cold War as the Soviet Union. How has it been able to do that? Because it’s getting massive inputs of machine tools, microelectronics, optics, mostly coming from China. Seventy percent of the machine tools, 90 percent of the microelectronics are coming from China. Now, these are dual-use items, but we know very clearly where so many of them are going.
And this poses two problems. It is enabling Russia to continue the aggression against Ukraine, so it’s perpetuating a war that China says it would like to see come to an end, as all of us would. But second, it’s also enabling Russia to rebuild a defense industrial base that countries throughout Europe are deeply concerned will be turned against them after Ukraine is done. And so at the very time that Russia is seeking better relations with countries in Europe, it’s also fueling the greatest challenge to European security since the end of the Cold War. And as I shared with my Chinese colleagues, you can’t have it both ways.
MR BRENDE: What was the reaction? Did they promise to then not supply 70 percent of the machine tools and those —
SECRETARY BLINKEN: It wouldn’t – it wouldn’t be fair of me to speak for them or to characterize their response. Let’s see what actually happens.
MR BRENDE: But you’re hopeful?
SECRETARY BLINKEN: I’m not going to – I’m not going to put a label on it other than to say they’ve heard us clearly, but I think as important – maybe more important – they’re hearing this from European countries. I’ve talked to a number of European leaders about this in recent weeks, including, for example, President Macron in France. And I know the deep concern that Europeans have about this support for the defense industrial base in Russia, because, again, this poses a threat to Europe’s security – not only Ukraine, but all of Europe.
MR BRENDE: I also saw that in the meeting between you and President Xi Jinping he said that – at least Chinese media reported the following: that the U.S. and China should be partners, not rivals, and seek mutual success rather than harming each other. What was your response to that?
SECRETARY BLINKEN: Well, look, let’s look where we’ve been over the last year. I went to China almost a year ago – the first trip that anyone from the administration had made at a senior level to China, because President Biden was determined that we would manage responsibly the relationship between our two countries. He believes that’s something that’s a requirement and that the rest of the world looks to us to manage it responsibly, and that starts with communicating. It starts with making sure that we have sustained engagement at every level of our government with our Chinese counterparts. And it’s a reflection of the fact that, as I said, the relationship is incredibly complex, and it’s clearly very competitive, but we want to make sure that competition does not veer into conflict. And the best way to do that is to be talking, to be engaged.
There are aspects where we’re directly contesting each other, but there are also places where we’re cooperating. And you start, again, by engagement, by talking. And after my trip, we had other colleagues go to China, and then most important, President Biden and President Xi met at the end of last year on the margins on the APEC summit outside of San Francisco. And they agreed that we would work to make sure that we were responsibly managing the relationship, putting as much stability into it as we possibly could, dealing directly with our differences, but also looking to see if there were areas where we can cooperate.
And they identified a couple of areas. One, making sure that we actually restored the military-to-military communications that we had but that had been interrupted – absolutely essential to trying to make sure that we don’t have a miscommunication, a misunderstanding that leads to conflict. That’s been restored, and we now have these communications between our militaries at every level from the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs on down.
Second, looking for areas where it made sense for us to actually cooperate. One of those is on the scourge of synthetic opioids. The number one killer of Americans between the ages of 18 and 45 is a synthetic opioid: fentanyl. And just think about that for a second; let that sink in. It’s not guns; it’s not cancer; it’s not automobile accidents. It’s a synthetic opioid. And the nature of this challenge is that chemicals that are made for perfectly legal purposes can be manufactured on one side of the globe and then diverted to criminal enterprises that turn it into an opioid, and that’s what’s been happening in the United States.
But this problem where we’ve been a canary in the coal mine – it’s hit us hard; it’s hit us first – we now see spreading around the world. And as our own market gets saturated, we see these criminal enterprises developing markets in Europe, in Asia, in Latin America. Now, sometimes it’s fentanyl, sometimes it’s ketamine, sometimes it’s Captagon, sometimes it’s methamphetamines, but we see this spreading. It’s why we’ve put together a coalition of more than 140 countries to work on this.
But China has a critical role to play because it’s a huge chemical manufacturer, and we found – not by intent – than many of the chemicals that are used to synthesize fentanyl start in China, get sent near us, typically to Mexico, turned into fentanyl, come into the United States, kill a lot of people. So we’ve sought to see if we couldn’t cooperate together, and we now have that cooperation, and we’ve seen positive steps that China has taken in terms of taking down some of the companies that are involved, putting in place new regulations. More needs to be done – and this is what we talked about on this trip – to really carry this forward, but it’s progress and it’s a demonstration that we can work together when it’s in our mutual interest to do it.
We’re now going to have a dialogue on artificial intelligence. Really important that our countries talked about the risks, the safety issues attendant to AI, which is going to be one of the defining technologies of the coming years.
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Source: U.S. Department of State
Speaker: Antony J. Blinken, U.S. Secretary of State
Format: Interview
China Policy Research 