US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will seek in talks with Southeast Asian nations next week to push back on China and to pressure Myanmar's junta, a top aide said Friday.
Blinken will travel to Jakarta for talks with foreign ministers of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), flying straight from Lithuania where he will join President Joe Biden at a NATO summit focused on Ukraine.
Blinken last month paid a rare visit to Beijing in a bid to keep high tensions in check. But the United States says it has also seen little change in policy by China, which has been asserting itself in the dispute-rife South China Sea.
"We have seen an upward trend of unhelpful and coercive and irresponsible Chinese actions in the South China Sea," Daniel Kritenbrink, the top US diplomat for East Asia, told reporters.
He said that the United States shared the view of Southeast Asian nations on unimpeded freedom of navigation in the strategic waterway, where China has made sweeping claims despite protests from Vietnam, the Philippines and other nations.
The United States and ASEAN seek to "push back on behavior that runs counter to that vision and to those principles, including the many irresponsible acts that we've seen carried out by China over the last several years and in the last several weeks," he said.
The ASEAN talks are expected also to take up turmoil in Myanmar, where the military ousted the elected government in February 2021 and launched a crackdown that local monitors say has killed more than 3,600 civilians.
Myanmar has been suspected from top-level ASEAN summits due to its failure to implement a five-point peace plan agreed on two years ago, although Thailand's outgoing army-backed government triggered controversy by recently inviting the junta's top diplomat for talks.
Without criticizing Thailand, Kritenbrink said the United States expected the bloc to "continue to downgrade Myanmar's representation in the ASEAN ministerials."
"We also look forward to finding ways to increase pressure on the regime to compel the regime to end its violence and return to a path of democracy," he said.
US officials said it was too early to say whom Blinken would meet individually in Jakarta, where visitors include Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
Meanwhile, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has called on China to work with Washington to fight the "existential threat" of climate change.
Speaking on Saturday, she said the two countries - the largest greenhouse gas emitters - had a joint responsibility to lead the way on climate action.
She called on China to support the US-led Green Climate Fund.
Ms Yellen is on a four-day trip to Beijing in an attempt to boost relations between the two countries.
Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng, who was among those to meet with Ms Yellen, said he regretted "unexpected incidents", such as the row over a spy balloon, had hurt ties with the United States.
There's been no formal co-operation between China and the US on climate change since the administration of former President Donald Trump.
And China briefly suspended climate talks entirely with the US last year after senior Democrat Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan, which is self-ruled but Beijing sees as a breakaway province it will eventually unite with.
But in a sign that co-operation could soon resume, Ms Yellen called on China to work together with the US to fight climate change and mitigate the effects on poorer countries.
During the roundtable meeting in Beijing with finance experts, she called on China to support US-led institutions like the Green Climate Fund, which was set up to help developing nations adapt to climate change and lessen its effects.
"As the world's two largest emitters of greenhouse gases and the largest investors in renewable energy, we have both a joint responsibility - and ability - to lead the way," she said.
China is now the world's biggest investor in solar energy, and biggest producer of solar panels and wind turbines but saw its carbon dioxide emissions rise 4% in the first quarter of this year compared to 2022.
The US, meanwhile, has invested billions of dollars in recent years into initiatives aimed at tackling climate change but also saw its emissions rise slightly last year, according to the International Energy Agency.
While Ms Yellen wants China to join the US in funding the worldwide transition to renewables, the sticking point is China's insistence that it is still a developing country.
Beijing says it is up to the US and Europe to pay for the energy transition, because they have historically created most of the emissions.
Ms Yellen is the second senior Washington official to visit Beijing in the last two months. Her presence there is aimed at easing tensions and restoring ties between the world's two superpowers.
Blinken has refused most contact with Lavrov since the invasion of Ukraine, although they met briefly at Group of 20 talks in March in New Delhi.