Blinken claims that China is trying to meddle in the next US elections from Beijing

Beijing: Despite Chinese President Xi Jinping’s previous pledge not to do so, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said, concluding his three-day visit to China, that the US had evidence of Chinese efforts to “influence and arguably interfere” in the next US elections, according to CNN.

In an interview with CNN on Friday, Blinken made the remarks as he was wrapping up his trip to China. During his time there, the top US diplomat met with Xi and other top Chinese officials for hours on end as the two nations worked through a number of divisive issues, such as Beijing’s backing of Moscow and US tech controls.

According to Blinken, he restated President Joe Biden’s directive to Xi Jinping, delivered at their November meeting in San Francisco, to abstain from meddling in the US presidential election of 2024.

CNN reports that Xi then promised that China would not follow through on this.

Blinken said, “We have seen, generally speaking, evidence of attempts to influence and arguably interfere, and we want to make sure that that’s cut off as quickly as possible,” when questioned about whether China was breaking Xi’s previous promise to Biden.

“Any interference by China in our election is something that we’re looking very carefully at and is totally unacceptable to us, so I wanted to make sure that they heard that message again,” he said.

Blinken also mentioned worries about China and other nations using influence efforts to take advantage of societal divides already present in the US, as CNN reported.

Based on its policy of not meddling in the internal affairs of other nations, Beijing has said time and time again that it does not meddle in US elections.

CNN reports that China and other countries thought to be associated with Beijing have been charged with meddling in foreign affairs, including Canada.

Blinken’s visit, which is his second in less than a year, is the most recent in a series of high-level meetings that resulted in the Biden-Xi summit in late 2018 and have seen the two nations begin to restore their drastically reduced bilateral relations.

“We are now  focused on areas where we’re working to cooperate, but we’re also being very forthright about our differences and that’s important if we’re going to avoid the competition we’re in turning into conflict,” Blinken said.