US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and a visiting senior Chinese official held talks in Washington on Friday over a range of issues concerning North Korea, Taiwan, Russia's war in Ukraine and the Middle East, a State Department spokesperson said.
The talks between Blinken and Liu Jianchao, minister of the International Liaison Department of the Chinese Communist Party's Central Committee, came just before Taiwan's presidential election on Saturday.
"The secretary reiterated the importance of maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait and in the South China Sea," Matthew Miller, the spokesperson, said in a statement.
"The two sides exchanged views on regional and global issues, including Russia's war against Ukraine, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, and the Middle East," he added, referring to North Korea by its official name.
Among the topics, the Taiwan issue has been a source of tension between Washington and Beijing as China has expressed its hope for reunification with the self-governing island democracy with the US opposing any unilateral change to the status quo despite its One China policy.
Blinken also noted the importance of defending navigational rights and freedoms in the Red Sea, the crucial waterway where tensions have spiked due to Iran-backed Houthi rebels' repeated attacks on commercial vessels.
The two officials reaffirmed the importance of continuing the progress made on key issues at the summit between President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping in California in November, Miller said. The issues include counter-narcotics cooperation and military-to-military communications.
"Both sides recognized the importance of continuing to maintain open channels of communication between the US and the PRC," the spokesperson said, referring to China by its official name, the People's Republic of China.
Separately, Blinken also held talks with Japanese Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa at the State Department.
In his opening remarks, Blinken stressed that the US-Japan alliance is "truly the cornerstone of peace, security, and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific."
"I think what we've seen in recent years, but especially over the last couple of years, is an alliance that has reached new heights where we are working together not only on a bilateral basis, not only on a regional basis, but genuinely on a global basis," he said.
