The United States is strengthening its alliances with countries such as South Korea and Japan to manage its intensifying competition with China, senior U.S. administration officials said Wednesday.
"We have deepened our alliances and partnerships abroad in ways that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago," Kurt Campbell, deputy assistant to the president and National Security Council (NSC) coordinator for the Indo-Pacific, said of the U.S. strategy to deal with China.
"We have strengthened our alliance with the ROK, including through greater cooperation on technology, and signed the Washington Declaration to strengthen America's extended deterrence," he added in a telephonic press briefing, referring to South Korea by its official name, the Republic of Korea.
The Washington Declaration is an agreement signed in Washington in late April by South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and U.S. President Joe Biden on strengthening U.S. commitment to the defense of South Korea using all military capabilities, including nuclear.
His remarks come after Chinese Ambassador to South Korea Xing Haiming caused a recent uproar in Seoul by insisting that those who bet on China's loss in its rivalry with the U.S. will "definitely regret it."
Campbell said the U.S. is working to manage the U.S.-China competition so that it will not veer into confrontation or conflict.
"We have pursued an approach to the PRC that is competitive without veering into confrontation or conflict," Campbell said, referring to China by its formal name, the People's Republic of China.
Campbell also stressed the importance of working with allies bilaterally and multilaterally to deal with what he earlier described as China's coercive behavior.
To this end, the U.S. has deepened its trilateral partnership with South Korea and Japan, he said.
The NSC official was speaking from an airplane en route to Japan where he said he will hold "another session to strengthen that partnership."
Campbell's remarks also come as Secretary of State Antony Blinken is set to visit Beijing for talks on how to manage the intensifying competition between the U.S. and China.
Daniel Kritenbrink, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, said the U.S. secretary will "stand up and speak out for U.S. values and interests" while meeting with his Chinese counterparts.
"He (Blinken) will raise clearly and candidly our concerns on a range of issues, and we will also discuss a host of regional and global security matters," he added.
Blinken will make a two-day trip to China from Sunday, marking the first visit to China by a U.S. secretary of state since 2018. It will also mark the first visit by any U.S. cabinet member to China since 2019, according to Kritenbrink.
Source: Yonhap News Agency