According to a brief statement by the State Department, the two men spoke over the phone. Yang is a member of the Politburo of China’s Communist Party, which gives him a higher rank than the nation’s foreign minister. “Secretary Blinken stressed the United States will continue to stand up for human rights and democratic values, including in Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong, and pressed China to join the international community in condemning the military coup in Burma [Myanmar],” the statement said.
“The secretary reaffirmed that the United States will work together with its allies and partners in defence of our shared values and interests to hold the PRC [People’s Republic of China] accountable for its efforts to threaten stability in the Indo-Pacific, including across the Taiwan Strait, and its undermining of the rules-based international system”.
