The US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the US has seen evidence that China has attempted to “influence and arguably interfere” with the upcoming US elections. He said Xi Jinping earlier committed that he would not do so.
Speaking to US broadcaster CNN, he said that US President Joe Biden repeatedly gave one message to Xi Jinping during their summit in San Francisco last November and that was to not interfere with the 2024 US presidential elections.
He said that Xi Jinping pledged not to do so.
“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,” Blinken was quoted as saying.
“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,” Blinken told the broadcaster.
Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday told top US diplomat Antony Blinken that the world’s biggest economies should be “partners, not rivals” as the two sides pressed for headway on a range of concerns.
Blinken, in China for the second time in less than a year, pointed to improvements in the relationship but urged greater action from Beijing on areas including curbing support for Russia.
Meeting Blinken in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People, Xi said the two countries had “made some positive progress” since he met with US President Joe Biden in November.
“The two countries should be partners, not rivals,” Xi said.
China has also maintained that it does not interfere in US elections and says that it abides by the principle of non-interference in other countries’ internal affairs. But now it is not just the US, Canada, the UK as well as Germany are probing Chinese interference in their political processes.
Three people arrested in western Germany this week faced accusations of passing information on maritime technology to China and an assistant to a German member of the European Parliament was detained on the suspicion he was sharing details of proceedings in the assembly with Beijing and spying on Chinese opposition figures in Germany.
(with inputs from AFP)
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