in his first 100 days president biden focused on the coronavirus pandemic but over the course of
his term the biden presidency will be defined by how the united states competes with china
in a few years china's economy is expected to surpass the u.s as the world's biggest
to determine how the united states will deal with china's growing influence mr biden has chosen one
of his closest aides as secretary of state it falls to anthony blinken to rebuild a depleted
and demoralized state department repair u.s alliances and champion what diplomats call the
rules-based international order the written and unwritten code that governs how nations deal with
one another rules that he says are now threatened by china the story will continue in a moment
it is the one country in the world that has the military economic diplomatic uh capacity to
undermine or challenge the rules-based order that we uh we care so much about and are determined
to defend but i want to be very clear about something and this is important our purpose is not
to contain china to hold it back to keep it down it is to uphold this rules-based order
that china is posing a challenge to anyone who poses a challenge to that order we're going to
stand up and defend it i know you say the goal is not to contain china but have you ever seen china
be so assertive or aggressive militarily no we haven't i think what we've witnessed over the last
several years is china acting more repressively at home and more aggressively abroad that is a fact
what's china's goal i think that over time china believes that it it can be and should
be and will be the dominant country in the world chinese fighter jets are increasingly visible
in the skies above the western pacific where the u.s navy also has a presence
this past week china's president xi unveiled three new warships to patrol the south china sea
it already has the world's largest navy and could use it to invade taiwan a democratic island and
long-standing u.s ally do you think we're heading towards some sort of military confrontation with
china i think it's profoundly against the interests of both china and the united states
uh to uh to get to that point or even to head in that direction let's talk about human
rights describe what you see it's happening in xinjiang that maybe the rest of the world doesn't
we've made clear that um we see a genocide having taken place against uh the uyghurs in xinjiang
more than a million people have been put into choose your term concentration camps
re-education camps internment camps when beijing says oh there's a terrorism threat
which we don't see it's not coming from a million people our administration six weeks ago in alaska
secretary blinken confronted young giache china's top diplomat about genocide in xinjiang
and china's military aggression we feel an obligation to raise these issues here today
the exchange became an international incident caught on camera and not lost in translation
the united states does not have the qualification to say that it wants to speak to china from a
position of strength if shinzone is in a red line with china then what is look we don't have the
luxury of not dealing with china there are real complexities to the relationship whether it's the
adversarial piece whether it's the competitive piece whether it's the the cooperative piece
even before the meeting in alaska president xi had warned about the dawn of a new cold war
during president trump's time in office china found the u.s less predictable than
past administrations and i just announced another 10 tariffs mr trump imposed tariffs on hundreds
of billions of dollars of chinese products in response to what he called unfair trade practices
and the theft of u.s intellectual property so far the biden administration has kept the tariffs in
place i also told president xi that we'll maintain a strong military presence china may be the only
big issue of the day in washington in which democrats and republicans find common cause
the chinese have stolen hundreds of billions if not trillions of dollars of trade secrets
and intellectual property from the united states that sounds like the actions of an enemy certainly
sounds like the actions of of someone who's trying to compete unfairly uh and increasingly in
adversarial ways but we're much more effective and stronger when we're bringing like-minded
and similarly aggrieved countries together to say to beijing this can't stand and it won't stand
so is that a message that president biden has delivered to president xi certainly in their in
their first conversation uh they covered a lot of ground it was a reportedly a two-hour phone
call it was yeah i was there and so did president biden tell president xi to cut it out president
biden made clear that in a number of areas we have real concerns about the actions that china has
taken and that includes in the economic area and that includes the theft of intellectual property
china's gross domestic product is expected to surpass the united states as early as 2028
well it's a large country it's got a lot of people if china becomes the wealthiest country
in the world doesn't that also make it the most powerful a lot depends on how it uses that wealth
it has an aging population it has significant uh environmental problems and so on but here's
the way i think about it nor writ large if we're talking about what really makes the wealth of a
nation fundamentally it's it's human resources and the ability of any one country to maximize their
potential that's the challenge uh for us it's the challenge for china i think we're in a much better
place to maximize that uh that human potential than any country on earth if we're smart about it
china thinks long-term strategically decades in advance is america just caught up on
the latest fires here and there and we're not thinking long term strategically and as a result
china will surpass us what i found looking at our own history
is that when we've confronted a significant challenge significant competition uh significant
adversity we've managed to come together and actually do the long-term thinking the long-term
investment and that is really the moment we're in now and that's the test that i think we're facing
are we actually going to rise to it president biden believes we are
anthony blinken occupies a suite of offices on the seventh floor of the state department
but he first worked for joe biden at the senate foreign relations committee nearly 20 years ago
and has barely left his side since in the obama white house secretary blinken held concurrent
roles as an assistant to the president and the national security advisor for vice president biden
it's been the most consequential professional relationship and and also in many ways personal
relationship uh that i've uh that i've had how often do you speak it's pretty close to daley you
speak to him every day in one way or another you know we're we're pretty good at meetings
so there are a few of those when i thought about the relationship that you have had
with with president biden over the years in the senate and then when he was vice president
the only relationship that i could come up with though i'm not a historian um was of course
secretary baker and president george h.w bush i'd be flattered by any comparison to secretary
baker i actually i spoke to him on the phone a few months ago and we talked about the importance of
ideally a secretary of state having a close relationship with uh with the president
he was extraordinarily effective for all sorts of reasons but that was i think a source
of his effectiveness secretary of state james baker helped president george h.w bush
end the cold war with the soviet union the current secretary is in the midst of winding
down america's longest war in afghanistan are you prepared for a worst case scenario in afghanistan
where the u.s backed government fails and the taliban takes over we have to
be prepared for every scenario and there are a range of them and uh we we're looking at this
uh in a very clear-eyed way but nora we've been engaged in afghanistan for 20 years and
we sometimes forget why we went there in the first place and that was to deal with the people who
attacked us on 9 11. and we did just because our troops are coming home doesn't mean we're leaving
we're not our embassy's staying the support that we're giving to afghanistan when it comes to
economic support development humanitarian that that remains and not only from us from partners
and allies somewhat related will the biden administration close guantanamo bay we believe
that it should be that's certainly a goal but it's something that we'll bring some focus to in
the months ahead in this past wednesday's address to congress president biden spoke about his plans
for immigration reform for more than 30 years politicians have talked about immigration reform
and we've done nothing about it it's time to fix it it's a subject not usually central to the state
department's mission but we asked secretary blinken about it because of the refugee crisis
on america's southern border border crossings for undocumented immigrants have skyrocketed
in march more than a hundred and seventy thousand people were taken into custody that's the highest
in 20 years are the policies of the bidet administration to blame
no what we're seeing is indeed a surge of people to the border we've seen that in the past but
we inherited a totally broken system uh broken intentionally and it takes time to fix it and by
the way our message is very clear don't come the border is not open you won't get in but we have to
understand what is motivating so many people to do this and it is usually desperation but that's not
new i want to talk about the policies of the biden administration because president biden did use his
executive authority to curb deportations to allow more asylum seekers to enter the united states
so are these new policies by the administration contributing to this surge we're focused when it
comes to people coming into making sure that that children unaccompanied minors are treated humanely
and according to the law is it problematic to tell migrants well no you can't come here
and then at the same time create a different situation on the ground that does allow them
to come but the point is that they're not and what's one of the challenges that uh that we've
had is that um traffickers and others are trying to tell them that the border is open it's not but
children are being allowed in and they're being children are the one exception because we we will
not it is the it is the right thing to do we are not going to abide the notion that children are
kept in a precarious dangerous situation that is unacceptable blinken himself is a father of two
young children and hails from a family that only a few generations ago were themselves refugees his
paternal great grandfather meyer blinken emigrated to new york city from ukraine fleeing russian
oppression in 1904 this coming week the secretary of state will visit ukraine to show support for
the country currently in the throes of more recent russian aggression president putin has amassed a
very large force at the border with ukraine more than a hundred thousand troops what is putin up to
you're right there are more forces massed on the border with ukraine than any time since
2014 when russia actually invaded i can't tell you that we know mr putin's intentions
there are any number of things that he could do or or choose not to do what we have seen in
the last few days is apparently a decision to pull back some of those forces and we've seen some
of them in fact start to pull back that's been verified that they are pulling back starting now
we're watching that very very carefully
secretary blinken on china's influence in hong kong
i think there'll be an economic blow back at 60 minutesovertime.com