(TibetanReview.net, May03’21) – China’s growing power is bad news for both the country’s rights-conscious citizens and the outside world, according to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken May 2. And increasingly powerful China is challenging the world order, acting “more repressively” and “more aggressively” as it flexes its influence, he has said in an interview.
“What we’ve witnessed over the last several years is China acting more repressively at home and more aggressively abroad. That is a fact,” the top American diplomat has said in an interview with CBS‘s “60 Minutes.”
He has said China is “the one country in the world that has the military, economic, diplomatic capacity to undermine or challenge the rules-based order that we care so much about and are determined to defend.
“But I want to be very clear about something… our purpose is not to contain China, to hold it back, to keep it down; it is to uphold this rules-based order that China is posing a challenge to.”
Blinken’s remarks came after President Joe Biden, in his first address to Congress on Apr 28, underscored that he was not seeking conflict with Beijing. He said he welcomed the competition from China to be the dominant power of the 21st century.
