US Secretary of State Marco Rubio will meet Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Manila on Wednesday, as President Donald Trump signalled that Washington would confront Beijing over its alleged interference in the 2020 election but played down the prospect of retaliation.
“We’re going to talk to them about it,” Trump told reporters on Tuesday, adding that the alleged interference “took place a long time ago” and that China might be “a little bit different today than it was then”.
“They do things to us and we do things to them,” Trump said. “I’ll be honest, we do things to them too. It’s not a one-way street, but we’ll be talking to them.”
People familiar with the planning told the South China Morning Post that the meeting between Rubio and Wang is expected to take place on Wednesday in the Philippines’ capital on the sidelines of meetings involving the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
The talks will come less than a week after Trump accused China of carrying out what he described as the “largest compromise of election data in history”, alleging in a televised address that Beijing had illicitly obtained over 200 million US voter records.
China has rejected the allegations. Its embassy in Washington said Beijing adhered to the “principle of non-interference in other countries’ internal affairs”.
“The relevant allegations by the US side are completely groundless smears, and have long been proven to be baseless,” embassy spokesperson Liu Chang told SCMP.
“China has no interest in, and has never interfered in, US elections.”
Trump’s softer tone left unclear whether Rubio would raise the allegations with Wang on Wednesday or through another diplomatic channel. Asked on Sunday whether he would raise the topic with Wang, Rubio declined to reveal the planned agenda.
“I would never tell you guys in a press conference what we would raise in meetings like that. Those are delicate matters,” he said.
However, the US secretary of state asserted that Chinese President Xi Jinping’s likely visit to the United States in the autumn remains on track.
“We anticipate that the trip is happening in September. They’ve continued to send over their teams to prepare for it, and I’ve heard nothing otherwise,” he said.
“When you have two big, powerful countries like the United States and China, there are always going to be irritants, there are always going to be things we don’t agree on.
“But I think it’s incumbent on powerful and important countries like ours to continue to talk and have a relationship.”
Beyond the election allegations, trade investigations, export controls and tit-for-tat restrictions on each other’s companies have continued to strain relations between Washington and Beijing.
Rubio is on a four-day visit to Manila to attend Asean-related gatherings, including the East Asia Summit Foreign Ministers’ Meeting and the Asean Regional Forum.
“The secretary’s visit advances a clear US priority: a free and open Indo-Pacific that delivers safety, security, and prosperity for the region and for the American people,” said Thomas Pigott, the State Department spokesperson, in a statement last week.
Disputes over trade, technology, critical minerals and maritime security are also expected to loom over the regional meetings.
The Rubio–Wang talks come a day after Trump signed an executive order directing US military contractors to reduce their reliance on supply chains linked to foreign adversaries beginning in January 2027, part of a broader effort to curb dependence on China for defence-related critical minerals.
Although the executive order did not mention China by name, it emphasised the need to maintain US military dominance “in an era of renewed great power competition”.
“The United States must secure its supply chains against physical, cyber, and economic subversion,” it said. -- SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
