Antony Blinken says China poses 21st century’s greatest geopolitical challenge
- Address by US secretary of state urges ‘standing up for our values when human rights are abused in Xinjiang or democracy is trampled in Hong Kong’
- Blinken stresses a foreign policy that sheds bluster and bullying and shores up ties with allies
China is the biggest geopolitical challenge that United States faces in the 21st century, one that pales beside the likes of Russia or the Middle East, the US secretary of state said on Wednesday in an address outlining the Biden administration’s foreign policy priorities.
If the US does not push back on China’s efforts to “trample democracy” and undercut human rights, Beijing will only become more emboldened, Blinken said in a video presentation from the State Department.
“China is the only country with the economic, diplomatic, military and technological power to seriously challenge the stable and open international system,” he said. “Our relationship with China will be competitive when it should be, collaborative when it can be and adversarial when it must be.
“The common denominator is the need to engage China from a position of strength.”
Blinken’s speech echoed a 23-page “interim national security strategic guidance” document released by Biden a few hours later designed to “provide direction to departments and agencies in advance of a new national security strategy, which we expect to release later this year,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said on Wednesday.