China ‘profoundly unhelpful’ as it ignored chance to cooperate, says US diplomat

In November, when Yemen’s Houthi rebels started firing drones and missiles at commercial ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden as the Middle East war heated up, Washington finally thought it had an issue it could cooperate closely with China on, a senior US diplomat said on Wednesday.

China has a huge volume of shipping passing through the dangerous waters, the attacks were a major threat to global stability and China was in a position to use their squadron in Djibouti as they did fighting piracy in the 1990s, said Kurt Campbell, deputy secretary at the US State Department.