China, North Korea’s Communist neighbour, has offered it fuel and food aid in the past and brokered international dialogue on the country’s militarisation.
Blinken’s comments followed the disappearance on Tuesday of Private Travis King, an American soldier who ran into North Korea during a civilian tour near the border with South Korea.
The secretary of state said he had no updates on King’s whereabouts but that “there are certainly concerns” he might be subjected to torture in North Korea.
The US is now working to anchor a declining Sino-American relationship, Blinken said on Friday. He, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and President Joe Biden’s special climate envoy John Kerry have all visited China within the past two months.
“It was important for us to put some stability back into this relationship, to put a floor under it, to make sure that the competition we’re clearly in does not veer into conflict, and that starts with engagement,” the diplomat said.
Blinken said China could help stem production of the illegal drug fentanyl that reaches the US through Mexico, control global climate change, and allow for the release of American detainees.
“If we weren’t engaged, we would be rightfully tagged with being irresponsible,” he said.
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North Korea silent on fate of US soldier Travis King after he bolted across the border
The email accounts of Washington’s ambassador to Beijing and the State Department’s top official overseeing East Asia and the Pacific were reportedly breached, according to sourced cited by CNN and The Wall Street Journal.
“What we’ve had on occasion to share more than once with China is the concern that anything targeting the government, targeting citizens, targeting companies is a real concern for us,” said Blinken.
“We will in the future, as necessary, take appropriate action.”
Beijing’s state-run China Daily on July 13 called the US “the world’s biggest hacking empire and global cyber thief” and said the current hacking allegation “only reeks of the US’s old game of tarnishing China’s image”.
The annual Aspen Security Forum is a foreign policy conference organised by the Aspen Strategy Group, a policy institute.