U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken (left) walks with Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang (right) before their meeting at the Diaoyutai Guest House in Beijing on June 18, 2023.
Lea Millis | afp | beautiful pictures
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Sunday met Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang and top diplomat Wang Yi in Beijing on a high-level diplomatic mission to de-escalate US-China tensions that have clouded geopolitics. treatment in recent months.
Blinken’s trip makes him the highest-ranking US official to visit China since Joe Biden became US president and the first US secretary of state to make the trip in nearly five years.
Blinken’s original travel plans in February were disrupted by news of a Chinese spy balloon flying over US airspace. The United States finally shot down the alleged spy balloon, and tensions between the world’s two largest economies have since remained tense. Beijing insists the balloon was an unnamed weather monitoring device that was blown up.
Blinken is scheduled to have a work dinner next Sunday at the Diaoyutai State Guest House with Qin, who previously served as China’s ambassador to the United States. Some reports show that There may also be a meeting with President Xi Jinping on Monday during Blinken’s two-day visit.
Expectations for a substantial recovery in US-China relations, especially 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 will “raise bilateral issues of concern, global and regional issues as well as the possibility of cooperation on common transnational challenge.”
At the annual Shangri-La Dialogue event in Singapore earlier this month, the US defense secretary and his Chinese counterpart There is no formal meeting. And more broadly, international travel restrictions during the Covid-19 pandemic have limited contact between the US government and China.
In August, one Nancy Pelosi’s controversial visit to Taiwan, then Speaker of the US House of Representatives, sparked the ire of Beijing. Beijing considers Taiwan to be part of its territory and has no right to conduct diplomatic relations on its own. The United States recognizes Beijing as China’s sole legitimate government, and maintains informal relations with the island, a democratic autonomous region.
Biden’s visit to Beijing could also pave the way for a November meeting between Biden and his Chinese counterpart xi — their first since Bali in November, a day before the G-20 summit begins.
At the end of May, the US Secretary of Commerce and his Chinese counterpart meet in Washington, DC US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is also expected to visit China at an unspecified time.
China’s new ambassador to the US, Xie Feng, coming to the US at the end of May after a period of about six months no one was in that position. At the same time, Biden also said that he expected US-China tensions to “start to thaw shortly”.
One potential opportunity for Biden and Xi to meet again would be in November, during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Leaders Summit to be held in San Francisco.
