Biden's Secretary of State says US is not seeking to 'economically contain' China

Speaking from a press conference in Beijing, China on Monday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the US is not seeking "to economically contain" China. 

"One of the important things for me to do on this trip was to disabuse our Chinese hosts to the notion that we are seeking to economically contain them. We’re not."

"And as I’ve said, we are not about decoupling, we’re about de-risking and diversifying, and here’s what I mean by that: first, when it comes to decoupling or economic containment, I think the facts simply belie that proposition. As I mentioned, our trade relationship has reached the highest number that it’s ever hit last year, about $700 billion in trade," said Blinken.

He added that American foreign investment in China "has reached levels that we haven’t seen since 2014."

"Parenthetically, we’ve got about 300,000 Chinese students studying in the United States. We have many American companies that I met with, or at least the representatives here, including they Chamber of Commerce, they continue to be very interested to do business here, and it’s profoundly in our interest," he said.

Blinken said that he told his Chinese hosts that their country’s economic success "is also in our interest."

"We have done a remarkable job of rebounding from Covid and having a growing economy, very low unemployment, tremendous investments in our future, but we also benefit tremendously when there is growth and progress in other countries, especially on one of the world’s largest economies when it comes to China."

Blinken said it would be "disastrous" to economically contain China. 

"However, what is clearly in our interest is making sure that certain specific technologies that China may be using to, for example, advance its very opaque nuclear weapons program to build hypersonic missiles, to use technology that may have repressive purposes, it’s not our interest to provide that technology to China, and I also made that very clear," Blinken said.

Blinken said that the US would continue to take "narrowly focused, carefully tailored" actions to "advance and protect our national security, and I think that’s a very important distinction."

Noting that the phrase "de-risk not decouple" came from the President of the European Commission, Blinken said that this "reflects very well the approach that many countries are taking, both because of the importance of sustaining economic relations, trade investment of China, but also because of concerns about some of the things that China is doing with the technology that’s getting to them."

Blinken said he made this very clear during his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping and other officials in the country.

During the same press conference, which took place after Blinken’s meeting with Xi Jinping, he noted that the US does "not support Taiwan independence."

"On Taiwan, I reiterated the longstanding US One China policy. That policy has not changed. It’s guided by the Taiwan Relations Act, three joint communiques, the six assurances. We remain opposed to any unilateral changes to the status quo by either side. We continue to expect the peaceful resolution of cross-strait differences."