US Secretary of State Antony Blinken says the United States has seen evidence of Chinese attempts to interfere in the upcoming US election, despite an earlier pledge by leader Xi Jinping not to do so.
Blinken made the comments Friday at the end of a three-day trip to China, where the top US diplomat spent hours meeting with top Chinese officials, including Xi Jinping.
According to the interview with CNN’s Kylie Atwood, Blinken said he echoed President Joe Biden’s message to Xi Jinping during a summit in San Francisco last November about non-interference in the 2024 US presidential election. Xi Jinping, for his part, promised not to interfere in the upcoming election in November. Blinken stated:
We have seen, generally speaking, evidence of attempts to influence and arguably interfere, and we want to make sure that that’s cut off as quickly as possible.
He went on to say that there are concerns about China and other countries playing on existing social divisions in the US in influence campaigns:
Any interference by China in our election is something that we’re looking very carefully at and is totally unacceptable to us, so I wanted to make sure that they heard that message again.
Beijing has repeatedly said it did not interfere in the US election, based on its principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries. Blinken said dialogue in the context of the current situation is the most important solution to avoid confrontation:
We are (now) focused on areas where we’re working to cooperate, but also we’re being very forthright about our differences and that’s important if we’re going to avoid the competition we’re in turning into conflict.
Earlier, Blinken said the US was considering introducing measures to influence growing Russian-Chinese economic co-operation because it could exacerbate the situation in Ukraine Blinken’s trip is the latest in a string of high-level meetings that culminated in the summit between Joe Biden and Xi Jinping late last year.
