China Acting 'More Aggressively Abroad,' Blinken Tells '60 Minutes'

WASHINGTON - U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in an interview that aired Sunday that China had recently acted "more aggressively abroad" and was behaving "increasingly in adversarial ways."

Asked by CBS News' "60 Minutes" if Washington was heading toward a military confrontation with Beijing, Blinken said: "It's profoundly against the interests of both China and the United States to, to get to that point, or even to head in that direction." "What we've witnessed over the last several years," he added, “is China acting more repressively at home and more aggressively abroad. That is a fact." Asked about the reported theft of hundreds of billions of dollars or more in U.S. trade secrets and intellectual property by China, Blinken said the Biden administration had "real concerns" about the IP issue.