Alwaght - China has canceled an important annual security meeting with the US that had been planned for October, a senior US official said on Sunday.
The New York Times cited an unidentified official as saying China canceled security meeting planned for mid-October with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis in Beijing.
The official said it was not clear whether the cancellation was because of the broad range of disputes between Beijing and Washington on issues such as arms sales and military activity in the South China Sea and other waters around China.
China and the United States are also locked in a spiraling trade war that has seen them level increasingly severe rounds of tariffs on each other’s imports.
“The tension is escalating, and that could prove to be dangerous to both sides,” the official said.
According to the American daily, a senior American foreign policy official summarized the administration’s attitude to China last week, telling a crowd at the celebration of national day at the Chinese Embassy in Washington that the United States was intent on competing with China — brittle language that is usually absent from formal events.
“For us, in the United States, competition is not a four-letter word,” the senior official, Matt Pottinger, who deals with China on the National Security Council, said in his remarks.
