After attending the East Asia Summit in Laos on Oct 11, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters that the United States will remain committed to the Indo-Pacific region, regardless of the outcome of the Nov 5 US presidential election, saying that the region is critical to US interests.
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00:00Well, good afternoon, everyone.
00:04Our focus has remained intensely on this region.
00:08And again, it's because it's so critical to our own future, to the lives and livelihoods
00:12of Americans.
00:14So given that, it's my belief that that basic approach will continue, irrespective of who's
00:24president, because it's so manifestly in our interests.
00:28And I think there's strong support in Congress for our engagement in the region across parties
00:37and across both houses of Congress.
00:39And I don't see that changing.
00:42What was also striking, again, is almost across the board, the strong desire for all of the
00:50ASEAN countries, and this extends well beyond ASEAN, but the countries in the room, to see
00:57that peace and stability is maintained across the Taiwan Strait.
01:03And I can tell you that with regard to the so-called 10-10 speech, which is a regular
01:11exercise, China should not use it in any fashion as a pretext for provocative actions.
01:21On the contrary, we want to reinforce, and many other countries want to reinforce, the
01:25imperative of preserving the status quo, and neither party taking any actions that
01:30might undermine it.
01:33And again, this goes to something that's very powerfully felt across the region.
01:37It goes to the importance of preserving peace and stability in general, but it also goes
01:45to something that I think affects the lives, the livelihoods, and the future of every country
01:50in the region, and arguably every country in the world.
01:52Fifty percent of commercial container traffic goes through the Taiwan Strait every day.
01:56More than 70 percent of the high-end semiconductors that the world needs are produced on Taiwan.
02:01So there's a strong interest around the world on maintaining peace and stability, preserving
02:06the status quo, avoiding any kind of conflict that could disrupt things that are so essential
02:12to the global economy.
02:22For more UN videos visit www.un.org