Beijing’s top diplomat Wang Yi urged Washington to “work with China” to “improve relations” during a meeting with Foreign Minister Anthony Blinken, China’s foreign ministry said on Friday.
The talks on the sidelines of Southeast Asian talks in Jakarta on Thursday were the latest in a series of high-level interactions as both sides try to ease trade and geopolitical tensions.
In their second meeting in less than a month, Blinken raised concerns about alleged Chinese cybersecurity threats after Microsoft said Chinese state-backed hackers had breached the email accounts of US government agencies, including Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo.
Wang is known as a ‘wolf warrior diplomat’, a confrontational style of negotiation popular with the Chinese Communist Party.
In a statement from Beijing’s Foreign Ministry on Friday, Wang told Blinken that Washington “must take a rational and realistic approach, and work with China in the same direction.”
Beijing’s top diplomat Wang Yi urged Washington to “work with China” during a meeting with Foreign Minister Anthony Blinken, China’s foreign ministry said on Friday.
He urged the US to stop ‘interfering’ in China’s affairs.
“Wang outlined China’s tough stance on the Taiwan issue and urged the US to refrain from interfering in China’s internal affairs,” the ministry said.
He called on the US to ‘stop suppressing China in economy, trade, science and technology and lift illegal and unreasonable sanctions against China’.
Tensions between the U.S. and China have risen in recent years over a range of issues, including trade, U.S. military support for Taiwan, Beijing’s growing assertiveness in the South China Sea and its cozy relationship with Russia.
China views autonomous Taiwan as part of its territory.
Washington has halted exports of advanced semiconductors to China, and Beijing recently retaliated by restricting exports of gallium and germanium, two metals widely used to make semiconductors and electric vehicles.
Talks between top diplomats did not lead to any progress, but were “frank, pragmatic and constructive”, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said, adding that the two sides “agreed to maintain communication”.
The State Department discovered a vulnerability in Microsoft’s cloud last month. The only two executive branch agencies known to have had an email breach are the Commerce and State Departments.
The talks on the sidelines of Southeast Asian talks in Jakarta on Thursday were the latest in a series of high-level interactions as both sides try to ease trade and geopolitical tensions.
In a statement from Beijing’s Foreign Ministry on Friday, Wang told Blinken that Washington “must take a rational and pragmatic approach, work in the same direction with China”.
Chinese cyberspies hacked Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo’s email — and had access for nearly a month before being discovered and hacked
Targeted cyber espionage campaigns have been mitigated. But about a month passed before the hackers gained access to the email account.
Nine U.S. companies were hit by a cyber attack that compromised some of the email accounts at each entity, a senior Homeland Security official said.
Microsoft reported that a total of 25 organizations worldwide were hacked.
National Security Council spokesman Adam Hodges told the Post, ‘US government safeguards identified an intrusion into Microsoft’s cloud security, affecting unclassified systems.
‘Officials immediately contacted Microsoft to find the source and vulnerabilities in their cloud services,’ he added. ‘We continue to hold US government procurement providers to a high security threshold.’
The discovery of the hack coincided with Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s visit to Beijing last month.
Beijing has condemned Raimondo’s Commerce Department for imposing strict export controls on Chinese companies, which the CCP says is a corrupt suppression tactic.
The FBI is investigating the matter.
Trade tensions have lingered since the Trump administration imposed tariffs on Chinese goods
Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, left, shakes hands with Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang, who in March accused the United States of ‘not fair competition, but hostile confrontation’
Secretary of State Anthony Blinken walks after arriving in Beijing, China, June 18, 2023. The Biden administration hopes to smooth relations after a tense period
No email accounts of Pentagon, intelligence or military officials appear to have been affected, said a person familiar with the matter.
Microsoft said late Tuesday that it had mitigated an espionage and data theft attack by a ‘China-based threat actor’ targeting government agencies in Western Europe.
Blinken met with Wang last month in the first visit to China by a US secretary of state in five years.
Despite Blinken’s presence in China, he and other US officials downplayed the prospect of any significant progress on the most vexing issues facing the planet’s two largest economies.
Instead, Blinken and other officials emphasized the importance of establishing and maintaining better lines of communication between the United States and China.
Secretary of State Anthony Blinken began a second and final day of critical meetings with senior Chinese officials on Monday, as both sides were willing to talk but showed little inclination toward compromise.
Both sides said that Kin had accepted an invitation from Blinken to visit Washington, but Beijing clarified that ‘China-US relations are at their lowest point since the establishment.’ This sentiment is widely shared by US officials.
The State Department said Blinken emphasized ‘the importance of diplomacy and maintaining open channels of communication across issues to reduce the risk of misunderstandings and miscalculations.’
Meanwhile, the Chinese reiterated their position that the current state of relations ‘does not meet the fundamental interests of the two peoples or the shared expectations of the international community’, according to the Foreign Ministry.
Blinken said before leaving for Beijing that Biden and Xi had promised to improve communication ‘specifically so that we can make sure that we are communicating as clearly as possible to avoid potential misunderstandings and miscommunications’.
US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen then visited China earlier this month, and climate envoy John Kerry will visit next week.