The world’s two leading economies remain at odds over China’s claims to much of the South China Sea and Washington has repeatedly urged Beijing to stop building artificial islands in the area.
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“China and USA must not follow old paths of confrontation and conflict”, he stressed. “Eighty percent of all the commerce today is on the back of a ship somewhere floating on the oceans”, Biden said. China‘s Vice Premier Wang Yang, left, takes his seat next to Secretary of State John Kerry, right, after speaking at the 7th U.S. China Strategic and Economic Dialogue (S&ED) and 6th Consultation on People-to-Peo…
China, in particular, is presenting the dialogue as a prelude to Xi Jinping’s visit to the White House slated for September, his first since becoming China‘s president in 2013. “Because nations that disregard diplomacy and use coercion and intimidation to settle disputes or turn a blind eye to aggression of others only invite instability and undermine the collaborative goals of the global community”.
But another State Department official told Reuters that not having a forum in which to discuss cyber issues in particular “didn’t make it any easier” to resolve any such disputes.
“We have a lot of hard work to do, but we have to keep at it day after day. Not only we depend on it, but the world depends on our mutual success; to put it bluntly, the world is dependent on those of you in this room to continue to work through those issues”.
About 400 Chinese officials have converged on Washington for the high-level annual talks being hosted by Biden, Secretary of State John Kerry and Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew.
A major focus of Tuesday’s discussions was expanding cooperation on combating climate change and renewable energy sources, a bright spot in the U.S.-China relationship, after President Barack Obama and Xi met in Beijing in November and made a joint announcement on curbing emissions.
This week’s talks come after revelations of huge breaches of U.S. government computer networks at the Office of Personnel Management – an issue U.S. officials said they would raise directly with their Chinese guests.
A bilateral cyber working group had been suspended by Beijing previous year after Washington indicted five Chinese military officers for hacking into USA computers to lift intellectual property and USA government secrets. Obama administration officials have said they are increasingly confident that China‘s government, not criminal hackers, were responsible.
In two separate statements Lew also expressed strong concern about what he said was “Chinese government-sponsored” cyber-hacking of USA companies to steal business information and technology.
WASHINGTON (AP) – The United States voiced deep concern Tuesday over state-sponsored cybertheft and tension in the disputed seas of East Asia but didn’t let the sharp disagreements with China on pressing security issues cloud the outlook for cooperation between the world powers.
“Decision-makers of both countries must always remember that confrontation is a negative sum game in which both sides will pay heavy prices and the world will suffer too”, Wang said.
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