Global Courant
Blinken’s trip to Beijing over the past two days — the secretary’s first under the Biden administration — marked a resumption of high-level meetings between the US and China after more than four tense months.
aly song | Reuters
BEIJING — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Monday that he has failed to revive military-to-military talks with China, despite earlier hopes to reopen that communication channel.
Blinken’s trip to Beijing over the past two days — the secretary’s first under the Biden administration — marked a resumption of high-level meetings between the US and China after more than four tense months.
Military communications were lost at that time.
China’s defense ministry declined a call to its US counterpart in early February following the discovery of an alleged Chinese spy balloon flying over US airspace. The defense chiefs of both countries attended an annual event in Singapore earlier this month, but they did not have a formal meeting.
The balloon incident delayed Blinken’s visit to Beijing by more than four months. The secretary arrived on Sunday and met with Chinese President Xi Jinping, the director of the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Foreign Affairs Bureau Wang Yi, and State Councilor and Foreign Minister Qin Gang.
Blinken told NBC News Monday that the spy balloon “should be closed chapter.”
He also told reporters on Monday that he “repeatedly” raised the need for direct communication between the two countries’ armies during the rallies.
“I think it’s absolutely essential that we have this kind of communication, from military to military,” Blinken said. “That necessity, I think, was only underlined by recent incidents that we saw in the air and at sea.”
“At this point, China does not agree to go forward with this,” he said, noting that the US would continue to work to restore those communication channels.
The US shot down the alleged Chinese spy balloon in February. Beijing insists it was a weather balloon blown off course.
Earlier this month, the US Indo-Pacific Command said a Chinese warship had come within 500 feet of a US destroyer in the Taiwan Strait.
Beijing considers Taiwan part of its territory, without the right to maintain independent diplomatic relations. The US recognizes Beijing as China’s sole government, but maintains unofficial relations with Taiwan, a democratically self-governing island.
US sanctions in play
A problem for the Chinese is that the US has sanctioned Li Shangfu, the Chinese Minister of National Defense.
The US sanctioned Li in 2018 while he was head of China’s equipment development division and oversaw China’s purchases of Russian fighter jets and equipment.
When asked in May if those sanctions would be lifted, even for negotiation purposes, the US State Department spokesman said no.
“You can’t have sanctions on one side” and discussions on the other, said Shen Yamei, director and associate research fellow at the state-backed China Institute of International Studies think tank’s division for American studies. That’s according to a CNBC translation of her comments in Mandarin.
Overall, she described Blinken’s trip to Beijing as a “really good turning point.”
Shen previously told CNBC that Beijing refused to take a call from a military hotline, saying it would be an acknowledgment that the situation was tense — and lead to more extreme U.S. action.
China often did not answer the phone – a hotline set up for emergencies.
Ahead of Blinken’s trip to Beijing, the US State Department said the secretary would “meet with senior (PRC) officials where he will discuss the importance of maintaining open lines of communication to improve the relationship between the US and the manage VRC responsibly.”
On Monday, Blinken said that after his trip, other senior US officials are likely to visit China soon, and vice versa.
He said he thought there was “a positive step” towards responsible management of the US-China relationship during the discussions over the past few days.
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