Blinken meets Wang Yi, Quad foreign ministers to discuss Indo-Pacific security issues

Asia-Pacific, News, US September 24, 2022 , by IRIA No Comments

Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi met with his American counterpart Antony Blinken in New York on the sidelines of the 77th United Nations General Assembly. The meeting preceded the Quad foreign minister’s meeting that took place at the same venue.

The meeting between the two top diplomats from China and U.S. was an attempt to open communication lines between the two countries. The Taiwan issue remained the main point of focus during the meeting as China accused the U.S. of sending “very wrong, dangerous signals” on Taiwan.

The U.S. Secretary of State told his Chinese counterpart that the “United States is committed to maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait, consistent with our longstanding one China policy.”

According to a statement released by the U.S. State Department, Antony Blinken also “reiterated the United States’ condemnation of Russia’s war against Ukraine and highlighted the implications if the PRC were to provide support to Moscow’s invasion of a sovereign state. He underscored that the United States remains open to cooperating with the PRC where our interests intersect.”

According to a state department official, Blinken “underscored that the United States and China and the international community have an obligation to work to counter the effects of that invasion and also to deter Russia from taking further provocative actions.”

Chinese foreign ministry also released a statement regarding the meeting. The statement said that during the meeting Wang Yi stressed that the “Taiwan issue is an internal Chinese matter, and the United States has no right to interfere in what method will be used to resolve it.”

Wang Yi emphasized that the “Taiwan question is the core of China’s core interests.” According to the Chinese foreign minister, the U.S. has made “a solemn commitment to China on the Taiwan question.” There are three China-U.S. joint communiques, and the current U.S. government has repeatedly expressed that it does not support “Taiwan independence”.

Tensions between the U.S. and China escalated over the Taiwan issue in the past few months. The first wave of increased tensions came when U.S. President Joe Biden hinted that the U.S. would not hesitate to intervene militarily to defend the self-governed island of Taiwan.

The situation become even worse in August after the U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan on a highly controversial trip. Pelosi’s actions did not set well with Beijing, which responded by conducting a large-scale military exercise around the island of Taiwan.

*^{U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken with Foreign Ministers of Australia, India, and Japan. (Image Credit: Twitter/@SecBlinken)}*

Soon after meeting the Chinese foreign minister, the U.S. Secretary of State participated in the Quad Foreign Minister’s meeting where he was joined by the Indian, Australian, and Japanese foreign ministers.

According to the post-meeting joint statement, foreign ministers from all four Quad nations reaffirmed their commitment to work on “results-oriented efforts to assist partners across the Indo-Pacific to strengthen their resilience, trust, and confidence in cyberspace, and effective incident-response capabilities.”