Jake Sullivan Asked How Xi Jinping Is Feeling About The US Presidential Election

and with that I'd be happy to take your questions yep in your meetings with throughout your meetings with Chinese officials uh including uh XI Jin ping did you get a sense of how the Chinese leadership is feeling about the race for the White House obviously the election would be a looming issue for them I didn't really get a feeling for that we didn't discuss the American election that's obviously something for the American people to decide and not for any other country to get involved in um so uh neither in my meetings with director Wong nor in the meeting with the president or for that matter with the uh CMC Vice chair did we specifically talk about the American election yeah hi there mark Stewart from CNN Mark Stewart from CNN um as you mentioned you talked about some of the maritime issues I don't have to tell you but obviously things are very tense right now in the South China Sea especially with the Philippines and some of these wreath issues um reading the readout it said that you discuss some of this with sh pink himself um other than diplomatic speak uh is there a a reasonable road map or blueprint for the future because I think that the level of tension is is reaching an extremely high level so first we believe that the order of the day should be deescalation and we support direct discussions between the Philippines and the PRC to that end we also have made very clear that our mutual defense treaty applies to public vessels including Coast Guard vessels that that are operating uh in the South China Sea and in other waters uh it also applies to aircraft for that matter so the PRC well understands the long-standing commitment the United States has under its Mutual defense treaty to the Philippines and the Philippines well understands that we have an ironclad commitment to support them uh in their lawful exercise of their rights their Maritime rights um at the same time nobody is looking for a crisis not the Philippines not the United States and we hope not the PRC but I did raise our concerns about some of the destabilizing actions that have taken place including the ramming of Coast Guard vessels uh and unsafe intercepts uh near Scarboro shol it's something we'll continue to discuss with our Chinese counterparts it's something we will cons continue to consult closely with our Filipino counterparts on and in fact before I came here I had the opportunity to call uh my Filipino counterpart the National Security adviser sec ano uh and I will stay in close touch with him as will uh other members of the US government so we will do our best to try to contribute to managing this issue in a responsible way so that deescalation is the order of the day yeah