I defended the speaker [ Nancy Pelosi ]. I defended her right to travel to Taiwan. I defended the peace and stability that we’ve had in the Taiwan St… - R. Nicholas Burns

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I defended the speaker [ Nancy Pelosi ]. I defended her right to travel to Taiwan. I defended the peace and stability that we’ve had in the Taiwan Strait for nearly six decades.

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About R. Nicholas Burns

Robert Nicholas Burns (born January 28, 1956) is an American diplomat and academic who has served as the United States ambassador to China from 2022 to 2025. Burns has had a 25-year career in the State Department, and served as United States Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs and the United States ambassador to Greece. As under secretary, he oversaw the bureaus responsible for U.S. policy in each region of the world and served in the senior career Foreign Service position at the department. He retired on April 30, 2008. He was a visiting scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center in summer 2008. Burns was a professor of diplomacy and international politics at the Harvard Kennedy School at Harvard University and a member of the Board of Directors of the school's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

Also Known As

Alternative Names: Richard Nicholas Burns Robert Nicholas Burns Nicholas Burns
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Additional quotes by R. Nicholas Burns

I often get asked about decoupling, but it’s not a word that we’ve used. I always say in my talks with the business community, we’re not actively seeking to decouple two economies that have come together over 45 years, a $718 billion two-way trade relationship annually, with thousands, tens of thousands of companies interacting with each other. If either side is beginning to decouple, it’s more China than the United States. They’ve talked about it more – they don’t use the word – but that’s certainly what they’re signaling in some respects, and they’ve been taking actions far longer than we have.

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Well, I wish we lived in a world where I could sit down in front of Chinese CCTV and say what I wanted to and not have that edited or distorted by the state-controlled press. I mean, the reality is when you deal with the state-controlled press here, they often will completely fail to report any kind of constructive criticism, and they’ll only report when you say something positive. That’s not true of Chinese diplomats in the United States. They can write op-eds in the Washington Post, which nobody edits. And that’s part of the problem we face here.

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