WASHINGTON, January 12. /TASS/. Washington seeks to prevent competition with Beijing from veering into conflict, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said at a press conference following a meeting between the US and Japanese foreign policy and defense chiefs.

"We are not looking for conflict, we’ll manage the competition responsibly but we will compete vigorously and we will seek to keep these lines of communication open and do all we can to establish guardrails to prevent competition from veering into conflict," he pointed out.