US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said a Chinese pilot’s “dangerous action” in a close encounter with an American aircraft underscored the need for regular communications between senior US and Chinese officials.
“The most dangerous thing is not to communicate and as a result to have a misunderstanding and miscommunication,” Blinken said on Wednesday at a press conference in Sweden. “While we have a real competition with China, we also want to make sure that doesn’t veer into conflict and the most important starting point for that are regular lines of communication.”
Blinken spoke a day after the Pentagon released footage that showed a Chinese fighter jet swerving in front of a US reconnaissance plane over the South China Sea, causing the US aircraft to shake violently for a few seconds. The maneuver, which occurred on May 26, was “unsafe and unprofessional,” John Kirby, spokesman for the National Security Council, said earlier Wednesday on CNN.
Liu Pengyu, spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington, blamed the US for the close encounter. He said in a statement on Tuesday that the US’s frequent “close-in reconnaissance on China” poses “a serious danger to China’s national security” and that “the US’s provocative and dangerous moves are the root cause of maritime security issues.”
Read more: US Accuses China of Risky Encounter Over the South China Sea
The US has been trying to revive communications between senior military leaders that China severed after then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan last August. But China has so far refused. Earlier this week, Beijing rejected Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s request to meet his Chinese counterpart on the sidelines of the Shangri-La security conference in Singapore this week. China says the meeting can’t go ahead because of sanctions the US placed on Defense Minister Li Shangfu in 2018. The US argues that the sanctions shouldn’t prevent a conversation.
Blinken called China’s rejection of a meeting with Austin “regrettable,” and Kirby, the spokesman, said “when you have tensions like this, you want to make sure you can talk. That’s why we want to keep the lines of communication open.”
--With assistance from Ryan Teague Beckwith and Jennifer Jacobs.
