US Secretary of State Antony Blinken (L) walks with China’s Foreign Minister Qin Gang (R) forward of a gathering on the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing on June 18, 2023.
Leah Millis | Afp | Getty Images
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Sunday met with Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang and high diplomat Wang Yi in Beijing on a high-stakes diplomatic mission to cool U.S.-China tensions which have overshadowed geopolitics in latest months.
The trip by Blinken makes him the highest-level American official to go to China since Joe Biden grew to become U.S. president and the primary U.S. secretary of state to make the trip in practically 5 years.
Blinken’s authentic journey plans for February have been disrupted by information of an alleged Chinese spy balloon flying over U.S. airspace. The U.S. in the end shot down the alleged spy balloon, and tensions between the world’s two largest economies have since remained tense. Beijing insisted the balloon was an unnamed climate tracker that blew off track.
Blinken is about to have a working dinner later Sunday on the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse with Qin, who was previosuly China’s ambassador to the U.S. Some stories counsel there may also be a meeting with President Xi Jinping on Monday during Blinken’s two-day visit.
Expectations for a major restoration within the U.S.-China relationship, particularly because of Blinken’s trip, stay low. State department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a statement last week that Blinken will talk about the significance of sustaining open strains of communication and can “raise bilateral issues of concern, global and regional matters, and potential cooperation on shared transnational challenges.”
At the annual Shangri-La Dialogue occasion in Singapore earlier this month, the U.S. protection chief and his Chinese counterpart didn’t have a formal meeting. And extra broadly, worldwide journey restrictions throughout the Covid-19 pandemic restricted contact between the U.S. and Chinese governments.
In August, a controversial visit to Taiwan by Nancy Pelosi, then speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, fueled Beijing’s ire. Beijing considers Taiwan a part of its territory, with no proper to conduct diplomatic relations on its personal. The U.S. acknowledges Beijing as the only real authorized authorities of China, whereas sustaining unofficial relations with the island, a democratically self-governed area.
Biden’s go to to Beijing might additionally presumably pave the way in which for a November assembly between Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi — their first since Bali in November, a day earlier than a G-20 summit kicked off.
In late May, the U.S. commerce secretary and her Chinese counterpart met in Washington, D.C. And U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen can be anticipated to go to China at an unspecified time.
China’s new ambassador to the U.S., Xie Feng, arrived in the U.S. in late May after a interval of about six months with nobody in that place. Biden stated across the identical time that he anticipated U.S.-China tensions would “begin to thaw very shortly.”
A possible alternative for Biden and Xi to meet once more could be in November, throughout the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Leaders’ Summit that is set to be held in San Francisco.