US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the US has seen evidence of Chinese attempts to “indisputably influence and interfere” in the upcoming US election, despite an earlier commitment from leader Xi Jinping not to do so.
Blinken made the comments to Kylie Atwood of CNN in an interview Friday at the end of a three-day trip to China, where the top American diplomat spent hours meeting with senior Chinese officials, including Xi, as the two countries navigated a range of contentious issues. , from US technological controls to Beijing’s support for Moscow.
Blinken said he repeated a message President Joe Biden gave Xi during their summit in San Francisco last November to not interfere in the 2024 U.S. presidential election. At the time, Xi promised that China would not do that, according to the CNN.
“We have seen, broadly speaking, evidence of attempts to influence and arguably interfere, and we want to make sure that that is cut off as quickly as possible,” Blinken said when asked if China was violating Xi’s commitment to Biden so far. .
“Any interference from China in our election is something we are looking at very carefully and is completely unacceptable to us, so I wanted to make sure they heard that message again,” Blinken said, adding that there is concern about China and other countries taking advantage of existing social divisions in the US in influence campaigns.
Beijing has repeatedly said it does not interfere in US elections, based on its principle of non-interference in other countries’ internal affairs. China or actors believed to be linked to Beijing have been accused of political interference in other countries, such as Canada.
Blinken also defended America’s right to protest when asked about pro-Palestinian protests that have erupted on U.S. college campuses in recent days and reports of the use of anti-Semitic rhetoric at some of those gatherings.
He said there were cases where there were clear expressions of anti-Semitism, but “the protests themselves are not anti-Semitic.”
“What we are also seeing are people, young people, people from different walks of life, who feel very passionately, who have had very strong emotions about (the conflict),” he said.
He also highlighted the importance of such expression in democracies, without explicitly noting the lack of such freedoms in China.
“In our country, in our society and in our democracy, giving expression to that is, of course, something that is appropriate and protected,” he said.
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