The United States and China publicly rebuked each other in the first face-to-face talks between senior officials from the two countries since Joe Biden took office, with one senior US official accusing their counterparts of being “intent on grandstanding” and “violating protocol”.
The strained relations of the global rivals were put on rare public display in Alaska on Thursday during a highly unusual extended back-and-forth in front of the cameras when US secretary of state Antony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan opened their meeting with China’s top diplomat Yang Jiechi and State Councilor Wang Yi.
“We will ... discuss our deep concerns with actions by China, including in Xinjiang, Hong Kong, Taiwan, cyber attacks on the United States, economic coercion of our allies,” Blinken said in blunt public remarks at the start of the first meeting. “Each of these actions threaten the rules-based order that maintains global stability,” he said.
