Blinken condemns China for weaponizing climate talks after Pelosi Taiwan visit

Antony Blinken stood before cameras in Manila on Friday evening with a sharp complaint: China was using the climate crisis as a bargaining chip, and the world was paying the price. The US secretary of state had just arrived in the Philippines after attending regional meetings in Cambodia, where he had sat across from his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi. What he wanted to say publicly was this—that Beijing's decision to sever diplomatic channels with Washington over House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan earlier that week was not merely a bilateral spat. It was, in his view, a weaponization of global cooperation.

Pelosi's trip to the self-governed island had ignited a crisis. China, which claims Taiwan as territory to be seized by force if necessary, responded with military exercises launched along Taiwan's coasts on Thursday and a broader diplomatic freeze on Friday. The freeze was comprehensive: military contacts severed, climate cooperation suspended. Blinken's point was that this punishment extended far beyond Washington. "The world's largest carbon emitter is now refusing to engage on combating the climate crisis," he said. Climate talks mattered to people everywhere, not just Americans. When China walked away from those conversations, it was ordinary people in other countries who suffered the consequences.

The Taiwan Strait itself carried weight beyond the island. Nearly half the global container fleet and nearly 90 percent of the world's largest ships moved through those waters. What happened there rippled outward—affecting supply chains, commerce, stability across the entire region and beyond. Blinken acknowledged the military dimension too. China had fired ballistic missiles into the waters surrounding Taiwan, a destabilizing move that raised the temperature considerably. Yet even as he catalogued these provocations, Blinken insisted the United States did not want escalation. He had told Wang Yi in Cambodia that Washington sought de-escalation, that dialogue remained essential to prevent misunderstanding or miscalculation.

In Manila, Blinken met with newly elected President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., who had taken office on June 30 following a landslide victory. Marcos Jr. offered his own assessment of the moment. He said he had not expected Pelosi's visit to raise the intensity of the Taiwan conflict—rather, it had simply exposed how intense that conflict already was. The volatility of the international diplomatic scene, he suggested, was now on full display. Blinken used the meeting to reaffirm America's commitment to the 1951 Mutual Defence Treaty with the Philippines and to partnership on shared challenges. The relationship between Manila and Washington, he said, was founded in friendship, forged in partnership, and strengthened by alliance.

Meanwhile, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations had issued its own call for restraint. ASEAN foreign ministers feared the situation could destabilize the region and lead to miscalculation, serious confrontation, open conflict, and unpredictable consequences among major powers. The stakes were regional and global at once. Before Pelosi's visit, China's ambassador to the Philippines, Huang Xilian, had warned that Manila should strictly abide by the one-China principle and handle Taiwan matters with prudence. The warning drew sharp criticism from opposition senator Risa Hontiveros, who pointed out that China itself had dismissed a 2016 international arbitration ruling on Philippine territorial claims in the South China Sea and continued to defy it. The hypocrisy was not lost on observers in the region.

What remained unclear was whether Blinken's appeals would move Beijing. China had made its position plain: Pelosi's visit was unacceptable, and the cost would be measured in suspended cooperation on matters that transcended bilateral relations. The question now was whether the channels Blinken said he wanted to keep open would actually remain functional, or whether the freeze would deepen as both sides dug in.