US calls on China to be responsible power

BEIJING: A senior US diplomat called on China to rise above their differences and work with the United States on difficult global issues such as climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic as a responsible global power.

Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, speaking in an interview with media after talks Monday with Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Vice Foreign Minister Xie Feng, also said the US welcomes vigorous economic competition with China but does not want it to veer into conflict.

China has bristled at American criticism on issues from human rights to its territorial ambitions and said repeatedly that the US cannot expect cooperation while also suppressing China’s development, a charge that Sherman denied.

“There are some things that rise above specific differences that are the global responsibility of great powers,” Sherman said in a phone interview shortly after she wrapped up successive meetings with Xie and Wang in the Chinese city of Tianjin.

The meetings were the second face-to-face talks between top diplomats of the two countries since President Joe Biden took office in January, coming four months after testy exchanges between Secretary of State Antony Blinken and veteran Chinese diplomat Yang Jiechi in Anchorage, Alaska, in March.

Sherman, who was sworn in in April, described the meetings as another step in the process of trying to work through critical issues with China.“We will see whether, in fact, there’s follow up and we are able to move another step,” she said. “There’s no way to know in the early stages of building this relationship whether we will get to all the places that we hoped for.”