China’s foreign minister says call with US’ Rubio was ‘positive and constructive’

BEIJING/WASHINGTON - Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi held a “positive and constructive” call with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Nov 11, China’s state news agency Xinhua reported, with Beijing expressing willingness to strengthen communication and cooperation with Washington.The talks come roughly a week ahead of the APEC Economic Leaders’ Meeting in China’s Shenzhen, where Presidents Xi Jinping and Donald Trump are expected to meet.The current stability in China-US relations has not come easily, Wang said, calling it “a rational choice made by the two major countries based on respective and shared interests,” the Xinhua report said.There was no immediate readout of the call from the US State Department.Xi and Trump have met twice already this year and Rubio told reporters on Nov 10 there was work under way to arrange a trilateral meeting on the APEC sidelines involving Trump, Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin.Rubio said Trump wants that meeting to happen and added: “We think it should be possible.”Trump said on Nov 8 he thought he would meet Xi and Putin in Shenzhen and discuss ending the war in Iran and denuclearisation.He said in October that he was open to three-way arms control talks with Xi and Putin, which he said would focus on nuclear weapons, although China has appeared less keen on such discussions.China’s foreign ministry said in October that its “nuclear strength is by no means at the same level with that of the US and Russia” and that it would be “neither fair, reasonable nor realistic to ask China to join the so-called trilateral nuclear disarmament negotiations at this stage.”The Wall Street Journal has reported that Putin has pitched using a trilateral meeting to discuss an end to Russia’s long-running war in Ukraine.This year’s Trump-Xi summits appear to have helped stabilise relations, but done little to narrow the broad differences between the two strategic rivals.In Washington, in September, they agreed a two-month extension of a trade truce that had been due to expire in November but disputes over tariffs, Chinese purchases of US goods, rare earth exports and technology restrictions remained unresolved.On Nov 10, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that the two sides would advance a new dialogue on artificial intelligence, but should harbour no illusions about their differences as they seek to manage the technology’s risks while competing for AI supremacy. REUTERS