Global Courant
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken boards his plane for a trip to Berlin, Germany, at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, June 22, 2021.
Andreas Harnik | Swimming Pool | Reuters
WASHINGTON – Secretary of State Antony Blinken will travel to Beijing this week for a meeting with senior Chinese officials, the State Department announced on Wednesday.
The visit was originally planned for earlier this year, but was postponed after a reconnaissance balloon with a link to China was discovered over US airspace.
The top US diplomat will “raise bilateral concerns, global and regional issues and possible cooperation on shared transnational challenges,” State Department spokesman Matt Miller said in a statement announcing the trip.
After Beijing, Blinken then travels to London to meet his counterparts from the UK and Ukraine. He will also meet some allies on the sidelines of the Restoration Conference Ukraine. Blinken is expected to encourage allies and the private sector to support Ukraine’s reconstruction efforts.
The trip follows a late-night conversation between Blinken and China’s State Council and Foreign Minister Qin Gang.
During the call, Blinken and Qin discussed maintaining open lines of communication between Washington and Beijing to “avoid miscalculation and conflict,” according to a reading of the discussion released by the State Department.
Tensions between Beijing and Washington have increased over China’s territorial expansion in the South China Sea, aggression towards Taiwan, allegations of espionage and human rights violations.
Last month, Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, and China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, met in Vienna to discuss a range of topics, including Russia’s war in Ukraine, as tensions simmer between the world’s two largest economies.
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The White House described the meeting as “candid, substantive and constructive”.
A senior Biden administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity under basic rules set by the White House, said the two spoke for just over eight hours over the course of two days.
The official said Sullivan reiterated US concerns about China’s alignment with Russia and the possibility that the world’s second-largest economy could help Moscow ease sanctions.
Washington and its allies have imposed several rounds of coordinated sanctions over the Moscow war that have seen Russia jump past Iran and North Korea as the world’s most sanctioned country.
So far, the White House has said it has seen Beijing offer no assistance to the Kremlin’s war effort.
