China major talking point at London G7 gathering

The Guardian newspaper reported that the G7 ministers were expected to talk on Wednesday about a range of challenges, including climate change and the pandemic.

Earlier, Blinken rejected claims that Washington wants a new Cold War with Beijing.

Speaking a few days after former veteran US diplomat Henry Kissinger warned that a failure to resolve US-China tension could cause serious problems, Blinken told the Financial Times: "I resist putting labels on most relationships, including this one, because it's complex … And when I look at the relationship, I see adversarial aspects. I see competitive aspects. I see cooperative aspects: all three."

Blinken said the US should engage with China from "a position of strength", something Beijing has rejected.

While speaking with Blinken on March 18, during their first face-to-face meeting, China's top diplomat Yang Jiechi, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and director of the Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the CPC Central Committee, said: "In front of the Chinese side, the US does not have the qualification to say that it wants to speak to China from a position of strength.

"The US side was not even qualified to say such things even 20 years or 30 years back, because this is not the way to deal with the Chinese people," he added.

Speaking on Tuesday, Blinken said the US recognizes that countries may have close ties with both Beijing and Washington.

"We're not asking countries to choose," he said. "We recognize that countries have complicated relationships, including with China, including economic relationships. And the issue is not that those need to be cut off or ended."

He spoke against the backdrop of ties between the world's two largest economies plunging to a low point under the previous US administration, and, after three months of the Biden administration, not significantly improving.

'Biggest problem'

Kissinger said earlier that strained ties between China and the US are "the biggest problem for America, the biggest problem for the world".

"If we can't solve that, then the risk is that, all over the world, a kind of Cold War will develop between China and the United States," said the 97-year-old former US secretary of state at the McCain Institute's Sedona Forum on global issues on Friday.

Kissinger said countries now have technology that could not be imagined 70 years ago.

"For the first time in human history, humanity has the capacity to extinguish itself in a finite period of time," he said.

Kissinger said the US "must be in constant dialogue with China" and make clear what the red lines are, while working to avoid conflicts.

"This is the complex task we have. Nobody has yet succeeded doing it completely," he said. "But that is the essence of the relationship. That's the challenge the administration now has."