Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said he was “glad” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was visiting China this weekend and stressed the importance of continuing diplomacy, even in the face of rising tensions between the two countries.
“I think despite our differences, and despite the ratcheting up of rhetoric, I think diplomacy is important,” Paul told Maria Bartiromo on FOX News’s “Sunday Morning Futures,” when asked about Blinken’s trip.
Blinken is in China meeting with officials, amid rising tensions between China and the United States. The trip was postponed from February, after the United States shot down a Chinese surveillance balloon hovering over part of the country. The trip marks the first by a secretary of state to China since 2018.
“All throughout the Cold War, we tried to have diplomacy with Russia. We should continue to have diplomacy with China. I think we should have ongoing arms control talks, even despite all of the things and all the complaints,” Paul said Sunday. “Look, I have had a lot of complaints about the leak from the lab. But there’s a lot of discussions and ongoing diplomacy that needs to occur.”
“So I actually wish Blinken well, and I’m glad he’s making the trip,” Paul added.
Paul has led efforts to investigate the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic, which was long assumed to have spread from a market in China. A competing theory, that it originated in a lab in Wuhan, China, was originally dismissed but has recently gained some traction. Scientists largely do not think there is enough evidence to draw any conclusions about the origins of the virus.
Paul stressed the importance of diplomacy with China in order to help prevent another pandemic. Paul claimed if China were “forthcoming” with evidence related to the lab-leak theory, “we could move on in a cooperative way.”