Rubio strikes cordial tone with China after Trump's claims of election meddling

MANILA — Secretary of State Marco Rubio struck a cordial tone with China’s top diplomat on the sidelines of a conference of Southeast Asian countries on Wednesday in an apparent bid to ease relations with Beijing ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s expected visit to the United States in September.

The top U.S. diplomat did not bring up President Donald Trump’s recent claims that Beijing interfered in the 2020 U.S. presidential election, expressed gratitude for Chinese cooperation on Iran, and touted progress on trade and counter-fentanyl efforts.

“I think Xi will have a very positive visit when he comes to Washington,” Rubio told reporters in the Philippines’ capital.

Rubio, once one of the most hawkish voices in Washington on China, has had to juggle his long-standing views on blunting Beijing’s rise with Trump’s drive to deepen relations with Xi and establish mutual spheres of influence in the world.

“Look, these are the two most powerful countries in the world,” Rubio said. “It would frankly be reckless and irresponsible for the U.S. and China not to have a relationship.”

After exiting a meeting room with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, Rubio expressed appreciation for Beijing holding back support for Tehran amid the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran and for opposing the establishment of a toll in the Strait of Hormuz, a shipping corridor for about one-fifth of the world’s oil.

He also said the two countries were moving toward establishing boards of investment and trade, which could be ready to tout during Xi’s visit.

“That’s one of the potential concrete deliverables that we can have before September, when that visit happens,” he said.

This week’s gathering of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, is routinely used by Washington to take up the concerns of smaller Asian powers against Beijing as the U.S. accuses it of bullying neighbors through economic and military coercion.

This year’s host, the Philippines, is particularly incensed over China’s actions in the contested South China Sea. On Monday, Manila accused Beijing of striking one of its navy personnel on the head with a wooden baton — an incident Beijing blames on Manila — and both governments engaged in dangerous naval maneuvers.

When Rubio was asked if he challenged China on its expansionary naval actions, he said, “It always comes up in every one of our meetings.” But he emphasized the importance of dialogue to avoid a “dramatic global impact.”

Rubio’s remarks were less confrontational than the rhetoric in an opinion column of his, that the State Department placed in prominent Filipino newspapers this week, in which he implicitly criticized Beijing’s threat to freedom of navigation in the South China Sea.

“If those waters fall under the control of a power willing to use commerce as a geopolitical weapon, both the United States and ⁠the ASEAN states would face dire new threats to their sovereignty, security and economic futures,” Rubio wrote.

China claims sovereignty over the vast majority of the South China Sea including areas that encompass the exclusive economic zones of Malaysia, Vietnam, Brunei, Indonesia and the Philippines. China’s claims have sparked disputes over islands and features for years.

More recently, the leader of the Philippines, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., has taken a more defiant stand against China while deepening his country’s security ties with the United States, Japan and Australia.

China’s top diplomat has implied these actions are being stoked by the United States. In China’s official readout of Wang’s meeting with ASEAN Secretary General Kao Kim Hourn, Wang said the security apparatus of the Philippines had “deliberately engaged in provocations and created maritime incidents,” which benefited the interests of “external forces.”

Last week, it was less clear whether Trump was seeking to improve relations with Beijing when he delivered a prime-time address accusing China of making an “illicit” acquisition of U.S. voter files containing information that included phone numbers, names, addresses and party affiliations, all things that are publicly available.

“The Chinese government wanted [the] U.S. president to lose the next election, and the reason they wanted me to lose is because they knew I was wise to them,” Trump said.

Trump’s claims were largely in line with previous U.S. intelligence assessments that China collected publicly available voter registry data but that there was no evidence that it affected the outcome of the voting process.

While some China hawks in Washington hoped that Trump’s comments signaled a new appetite to confront Beijing, the move appeared designed to build domestic support for an election bill stalled in Congress rather than opening up a new front in the bilateral relationship.

Trump’s interest in moving past the issue were reinforced in remarks he made Tuesday.

Trump suggested that the United States interferes in China’s domestic politics, implying that the transgressions he hailed just days before were not so extraordinary.

“I’ll be honest. We do things to them, too. It’s not a one-way street,” he said.

Trump did say it would be a topic of bilateral discussions. “Well, we’re going to talk to them about it,” Trump said.

But when asked if it came up with his meeting with Wang on Wednesday, Rubio said, “We didn’t discuss that topic.”