Global Courant
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken (L) walks with Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang (R) prior to a meeting at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing on June 18, 2023.
Leah Millis | Afp | Getty Images
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Sunday met with Chinese Secretary of State Qin Gang and top diplomat Wang Yi in Beijing on a high-stakes diplomatic mission to address the tensions between the US and China that have weighed on geopolitics in recent months. overshadowed, to cool.
Blinken’s trip makes him the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit China since Joe Biden became U.S. president and the first U.S. Secretary of State to make the trip in nearly five years.
Blinken’s original travel plans for February were disrupted by news of an alleged Chinese spy balloon flying over US airspace. The US eventually shot down the alleged spy balloon and tensions between the world’s two largest economies have remained tense ever since. Beijing insisted the balloon was an unnamed weather tracker that had blown off course.
Blinken will have a working dinner later Sunday at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse with Qin, who was previously China’s ambassador to the US. Some reports suggest there may also be a meeting with President Xi Jinping on Monday during Blinken’s two-day visit.
Expectations for a significant recovery in the US-China relationship, particularly as a result of Blinken’s trip, remain low. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement last week that Blinken will discuss the importance of maintaining open lines of communication and “raise bilateral concerns, global and regional affairs and possible cooperation on shared transnational challenges”.
At the annual Shangri-La Dialogue event in Singapore earlier this month, the US defense chief and his Chinese counterpart did not have a formal meeting. And more generally, international travel restrictions during the Covid-19 pandemic limited contact between the US and Chinese governments.
In August, a controversial visit to Taiwan by Nancy Pelosi, then Speaker of the US House of Representatives, fueled Beijing’s anger. Beijing considers Taiwan part of its territory, without the right to maintain diplomatic relations on its own. The US recognizes Beijing as China’s sole legal government, while maintaining unofficial relations with the island, a democratically self-governed region.
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Biden’s visit to Beijing could also potentially pave the way for a November meeting between Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi – their first since Bali in November, a day before a G-20 summit got underway.
At the end of May, the US Secretary of Commerce and her Chinese counterpart met in Washington, DC. And US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is also expected to visit China at an undetermined date.
China’s new ambassador to the US, Xie Feng, arrived in the US in late May after a period of about six months without anyone in that position. Biden said around the same time that he expected tensions between the US and China would “start to thaw very soon”.
A possible opportunity for Biden and Xi to meet again would be in November at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Leaders’ Summit to be held in San Francisco.
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