US Sec. of State Blinken: Our purpose is not to contain China, to hold it back, to keep it down.

In a CBS interview, published late Sunday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken cites China’s military, economic, diplomatic capacity to undermine or challenge the rules-based order that the US “care so much about and are determined to defend.”

It should, however, be noted the US diplomat didn’t want to trigger any geopolitical risks while saying, “I want to be very clear about something. And this is important. Our purpose is not to contain China, to hold it back, to keep it down. It is to uphold this rules-based order that China is posing a challenge to.”

US’s Blinken further said, “I think what we-- what we've witnessed over the last-- several years is China acting more repressively at home and more aggressively abroad. That is a fact.”

Market implications

The news pulls the S&P 500 Future back from the intraday top but off in China and Japan restricts the market reaction.

Read: S&P 500 Futures consolidate Friday’s losses below 4,200