Asia Times: Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told off U.S. Secretary of State Blinken for his double politics.
An attempt by U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken to obtain information from Beijing on contacts with Russia and Germany suffered a fiasco, says an article in Asia Times.
As the author, Indian columnist and former diplomat Melkulangara Bhadrakumar, notes, the U.S. secretary of state decided that in his “self-appointed role as world policeman,” he had the right to be privy to all matters between Germany, China and Russia.
“However, Blinken’s call to Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Friday, Dec. 23, turned into a fiasco,” he writes.
According to Bhadrakumar, the U.S. foreign minister “must have expected to gather details” about two top-level conversations Chinese President Xi Jinping had last week: with German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and United Russia Party Chairman Dmitry Medvedev.
Blinken probably came to the “reasonable conclusion” that Steinmeier’s call to Xi Jinping and Medvedev’s visit to Beijing “were by no means coincidental”, and therefore he “suspected something amiss”. On both occasions, Ukraine was among the topics of discussion, but Blinken “executed this mission clumsily”, focusing on the contentious U.S.-China issues, especially the coronavirus situation in China, demanding “transparency for the international community.”
“Not surprisingly, Wang Yi sternly chided Blinken for trying to ‘simultaneously conduct dialogue and exercise restraint’ and ‘stab China in the back while talking about cooperation,'” the author concludes.
As the State Department earlier reported, Blinken had a telephone conversation with China’s foreign minister during which the two sides discussed the need to keep communication channels open and also discussed Russia’s special operation in Ukraine. Wang Yi said Sunday that Sino-U.S. relations had faced serious difficulties in the past year, with China firmly resisting U.S. provocations and pressure.