During his confirmation hearing before the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, President Joe Biden’s nominee to assume the post of ambassador to China accused Beijing of “blocking” the international community with information about the origins of Covid-19.
“We need to pressure the Chinese to clarify what happened,” said Nicholas Burns, at the hearing held on Wednesday (20).
Burns, who is a career diplomat and former US ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), also said the United States should hold China accountable for not following trade and investment rules by stealing intellectual property and adopting subsidies dumping of goods and unfair labor practices. “These actions harm American companies and workers,” he claimed.
Burns added that the US government must seek channels of communication with Beijing so that there is peace in the Indo-Pacific region, but stressed that hostilities have come from China and not from its neighbors.
“Beijing has been the aggressor against India along its border with the Himalayas, against Vietnam, the Philippines and others in the South China Sea, against Japan in the East China Sea, and has launched a campaign of intimidation against Australia and Lithuania. The genocide practiced by China in Xinjiang (autonomous territory in the northwest of the country) and the abuses in Tibet, the suffocation of autonomy and freedoms in Hong Kong and the intimidation of Taiwan are unjust and must stop”, he denounced.
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