8-minute opening snowballs into 90 minutes of rancor as dispute kickstarts Alaska talks
They were meant to last only eight minutes. In the end, the opening remarks at the first high-level talks between the U.S. and China since Joe Biden took over as president, spilled over into 90 minutes of undiplomatic rancor.
While the U.S. side accused their Chinese counterparts of breaching an agreement by making their speeches at the talks in the Alaskan state capital of Anchorage well over two minutes, Beijing’s envoys cried foul at the hosts for trying to bar them from giving responses.
According to PBS correspondent Nick Schifrin, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken finished his opening speech in 2 minutes 27 seconds and White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan made his within 2 minutes 17 seconds.
By contrast, the Chinese Communist Party’s foreign affairs chief, Yang Jiechi, made a 16 minute 14 second-speech and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi spoke for four minutes nine seconds, according to Schifrin.
Some observers said Blinken could have outraged China’s top diplomats by raising the issues of Hong Kong, Taiwan and the Xinjiang autonomous region in his speech, prompting Yang and Wang to hit back with lengthy statements.
Yang warned the U.S. to stop meddling in China’s internal affairs and said it should stop advancing its own version of democracy in the rest of the world. He also accused Blinken and other U.S. officials of being “condescending,” saying that Beijing would not accept unwarranted accusations from Washington.
A senior U.S. official told CNN that China was to blame for violating the two-minute protocol in the first place. Chinese aides asked reporters to leave the meeting venue after Yang and Wang finished their speeches. But Blinken prepared to make a rebuttal to the duo’s extended speeches, and asked journalists to stay to cover his second speech, lasting about three minutes, and Sullivan’s two-minute response, CNN reported.
The Chinese side then expressed displeasure at the U.S. officials’ signal that all opening speeches had been finished, and insisted that they also made a second round of speeches, the report said.
China’s state-affiliated Phoenix Television accused the American officials of inappropriate arrangements by trying to deprive Yang and Wang of their second speeches. At the time, vice foreign minister Xie Feng protested to the U.S. hosts while Yang questioned why the American side was afraid of the media’s presence in their follow-up speeches, Phoenix said.
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