Veteran diplomat confirmed as US ambassador to China

The US Senate on Thursday confirmed longtime former diplomat Nicholas Burns as ambassador to China amid a period of ongoing tensions between the two countries.

Burns, 65, a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and former US ambassador to NATO, was confirmed by a vote of 75-18 to the position that had stood vacant for more than a year.

"If there's a place that we need an ambassador, it's China," Senator Robert Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat who chairs the Foreign Relations Committee, said before the confirmation vote. "We've spent so much time, both in committee [and] on the floor, hearing about the challenges of China, but we don't have a US ambassador to help us meet those challenges," he said.

Burns was nominated by US President Joe Biden in August, but his confirmation was delayed by political maneuvering in Washington.

Senator James Risch of Idaho, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said: "If you're looking for a bipartisan person to put in a position, this is your guy. We've got a lot of issues that exist between us and China and, certainly, Ambassador Burns is the one to carry our water there."

In testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in October, Burns, who also served as US under-secretary of state for political affairs from 2005 to 2008, adhered to current Secretary of State Antony Blinken's approach to China of being "competitive when it should be, collaborative when it can be and adversarial when it must be".

"Part of what we will need to do in the US-China relationship is mitigate the possibility of an accidental conflict and to maintain the peace between our two countries and in the region," he said then.

On the Taiwan question, Burns said: "My own view is that we're better off, and will be more effective, in staying with the one-China policy of the last four decades. We recognize the People's Republic of China as the sole legal government of China, and yet we have unofficial relations with Taiwan," Burns said.

Burns also has encouraged US politicians to travel to China post-pandemic.

"I think it's very important for members to travel — they're members of Congress, and ultimately most important for the president to have direct conversations as he is seeking to do; he's had phone conversations with President Xi Jinping," Burns said.

"It's to our benefit to maintain engagement between our peoples as well, including students, scholars, diplomats and journalists, so long as America's laws are respected," he added.

Burns served as ambassador to Greece (1997-2001) and State Department spokesman (1995-1997). He worked for five years (1990-95) on the National Security Council at the White House, where he was senior director for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia Affairs.

The previous US ambassador to China, Terry Branstad, resigned in October 2020 to help Donald Trump in his re-election campaign for president against Biden in 2020.

A longtime governor of Iowa, Branstad was described as an "old friend" by President Xi, who had visited the Midwestern agricultural state before he became president.

Zhao Huanxin in Washington and Agence France-Press contributed to this story.