The US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, has advised China against altering the status quo on Taiwan, which is essential for sustaining regional peace and security.
Blinken said during a Friday talk with University of Chicago Institute of Politics Founding Director David Axelrod that China has attempted to increase military and economic pressure on Taiwan over the last several years.
The secretary of state said that China chose in recent years that it was no longer satisfied with the status quo on Taiwan, a status quo that had persisted for decades and been effective in terms of the relationship between our countries and handling a tough situation.
He noted that from the standpoint of the United States, the status quo has worked and is essential to what is crucial to the US, namely the maintenance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.
Every day, fifty percent of the world’s cargo ships pass through the Taiwan Strait, and at least seventy percent of the world’s high-end computer chips are made in Taiwan. Blinken said that if this is disturbed, the whole global economy would suffer.
In answer to a question, he said, “Every nation in the globe has an interest in ensuring that peace and stability stay in the strait and that conflicts are settled peacefully, not via pressure, coercion, or the use of force.”
Next month, Blinken is expected to fly to Beijing.
We are in a contest. I believe there is a point in time, which we can also discuss, in which we are no longer in the post-Cold War period.
“China is a strong competitor, and their view of what the world should be and where it should go differs significantly from ours in many aspects. However, competition is not the same thing as conflict. “It is in our best interest to ensure that, despite our intense competition, we do not veer into war,” he stated.
“One of the ways you achieve this is by ensuring that you have excellent lines of communication, that you are talking, that you are interacting, that you are putting guardrails on the relationship and a floor underneath it. This is what President Biden and President Xi were doing in Bali, according to Biden.