Kamala Harris silent on China, says no to direct talks with Putin: 60 Minutes interview
US Vice-President Kamala Harris refrained from discussing her China policy in a rare solo network interview for the CBS programme "60 Minutes" that aired on Monday night, instead focusing on Ukraine and Israel.
Harris rejected the option of opening direct negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin on ending the Ukraine war and was non-committal on including Ukraine in a possible expansion of Nato.
"Ukraine must have a say in the future of Ukraine. [As for Nato], we will deal with if and when it arrives at that point," Harris said.
Do you have questions about the biggest topics and trends from around the world? Get the answers with SCMP Knowledge, our new platform of curated content with explainers, FAQs, analyses and infographics brought to you by our award-winning team.
"Right now, we are supporting Ukraine's ability to defend itself against Russia's unprovoked aggression," she added, claiming that Putin "would be sitting in Kyiv right now" if former president Donald Trump was in the White House.
The Democratic candidate also refused to directly answer whether Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was "a real close [US] ally".
"I think, with all due respect, the better question is 'do we have an important alliance between the American people and the Israeli people?' And the answer to that question is yes."
The interview notably did not touch on China-related topics, with CBS correspondent Bill Whitaker mentioning only that Harris said she was "determined that the US must win the economic competition with China for the 21st century".
The wording is similar to the vice-president's remarks when she accepted the Democratic Party's presidential nomination in August. In a brief mention of China, Harris said she would work to ensure that the US, not China, "wins the competition for the 21st century."
She repeated the phrase in her debate with Trump, the Republican candidate. In response to Trump's claim that she intended to export US jobs to China, Harris accused him of "selling American chips to China to help them improve and modernise their military".
Harris also noted during the debate that Trump had delivered many compliments about Chinese President Xi Jinping while he was in the White House.
Harris' latest remarks add to the scant references to China during the Democratic presidential campaign. The vice-president has focused more on domestic issues such as abortion, immigration and rising costs for the middle class and said little about foreign policy.
Unlike President Joe Biden - who met Xi several times as Barack Obama's vice-president before both became leaders of their respective countries - Harris only briefly spoke with the Chinese leader in November 2022 on the sidelines of the Apec summit in Bangkok.
Relations between Beijing and Washington were at a low point following then-US House speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan, which prompted China to freeze lines of communication with the US.
At the time, Harris posted on Twitter that she had "greeted" Xi before the Apec leaders' retreat and stressed the need to "maintain open lines of communication to responsibly manage the competition between our countries".
Last year, on the eve of the Apec summit in San Francisco, she also underlined that US policy towards China was "not about decoupling, it is about de-risking".
"It's not about pulling out, but it is about ensuring that we are protecting American interests and that we are a leader in terms of the rules of the road, as opposed to following others' rules," Harris said.
US Vice-President Kamala Harris with Chinese President Xi Jinping before the Apec Leaders' Retreat in Bangkok on November 19, 2022. Photo: Reuters alt=US Vice-President Kamala Harris with Chinese President Xi Jinping before the Apec Leaders' Retreat in Bangkok on November 19, 2022. Photo: Reuters>
Notably, neither candidate has yet spoken about Taiwan in any meaningful way, though Trump has said Taipei should "reimburse" Washington for its security spending there.
The Harris campaign has pushed for most of the Biden administration's China policies to continue should she win election next month.
That is likely to mean maintaining the tariffs on Chinese imports initiated by Trump in 2018 as well as continuing significant support for the Chips and Science Act, signed by Biden in 2022.
The latter legislation has provided more than US$280 billion for domestic chip production and restricted Beijing's access to cutting-edge semiconductors.
Trump was also invited to appear on the show's election special, but cancelled his appearance.
The 60 Minutes programme is television's longest-running prime time news show and traditionally features major-party candidates in the month before presidential elections.
CBS said Trump initially agreed to an interview but his campaign later backed out, demanding "an apology" from correspondent Lesley Stahl, who interviewed him in 2020.
On that occasion, Trump walked out of the interview halfway through, with the words: "[Joe Biden has] never been asked a question that's hard."
The Republican Party has also objected to potential fact-checking by CBS in the current election campaign, which the network says is standard practice for all its stories.
This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2024 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
Copyright (c) 2024. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.