Monitoring Desk
ISLAMABAD/MUNICH: United States Vice President Kamala Harris on Friday discussed with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron the challenges posed by China and agreed to remain closely connected during meetings in Munich, the White House said.
Harris “discussed challenges posed by China, including the importance of upholding the rules-based order, the White House statement said.
Bitter dispute between US and China
The meetings with the European leaders, held alongside the Munich security conference, come amid a bitter dispute between the United States and China over the US military’s shooting down of what it claimed was a Chinese spy balloon in South Carolina early this month. China claimed that the balloon was for weather monitoring.
Harris defended the US’s handling of the balloon incident and the shooting down of three other unidentified objects. Harris told MSNBC, “It needed to be shot down because we were confident that China used it to spy on American people.”
Separately, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Michael Chase, the senior Pentagon representative for China, landed in Taiwan on Friday, according to two people who knew the situation.
The trip could exacerbate tensions between Washington and Beijing.
Although the US, like most countries, has no formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan, it is the island’s most important arms supplier. The two countries only have a close security relationship. China, which claims Taiwan as its territory, has repeatedly demanded that no foreign officials visit the democratically governed region.
With the shooting down of the Chinese balloon, US diplomatic relations with China are still open. Still, there is no longer any military engagement between the two nations, the White House announced earlier on Friday.
After Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker of the US House of Representatives, visited Taiwan in August, China cut off several military-to-military channels and other areas of bilateral communication with the US.
