The American Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, arrived in China on Wednesday on his second visit in a year with the mission of pressuring Beijing for its support for Russia, but without damaging the stabilization process in bilateral relations between both powers.
The head of American diplomacy will meet with leaders of the Beijing regime this Friday. Among the topics to be discussed are tensions over Taiwan and Washington’s concerns about Chinese trade practices.
The Secretary of State’s plane landed in Shanghai on Wednesday.
In China’s financial capital, Blinken has a lighter agenda, with meetings with students and businessmen, before traveling to the capital to meet with the country’s high command on Friday.
“Cooperation in anti-narcotics, communication between the military, artificial intelligence and strengthening ties between peoples” will be on the table, according to the Secretary of State, which pointed out that Blinken will reiterate the importance of the US and China Manage your disagreements from responsibility.
Specifically, the secretary of state is expected to call for restraint toward Taiwan, which is preparing for the inauguration of a new president in May, and raise Washington’s concerns about Chinese trade practices, a key issue for President Joe Biden in a election year.
But Blinken also hopes to stabilize relations between the two countries, clearly on the decline since his previous visit in June and the meeting between Presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping in November.
At the California summit in November, Xi agreed to several American requests, including the resumption of military contacts and control of chemical precursors to fentanyl, the powerful painkiller responsible for an addiction epidemic in the United States.
A senior American official commented that the United States and China “are in a different moment than a year ago, when the bilateral relationship was at a historically low point.”
“We also believe, and we have clearly demonstrated, that the responsible management of competition does not imply that we will abandon measures to protect the national interests of the United States,” he assured.
Washington has also questioned in recent weeks that Beijing has supplied industrial material and technology to Moscow, despite not providing military aid.
Before traveling to China, Blinken also insisted on allegations that Beijing is carrying out a “genocide” against the predominantly Muslim Uyghur minority in the west of the country.
The visit takes place after the US Senate approved a bill that will force the Chinese company ByteDance to sell TikTok within nine months if it does not want the platform to be banned in the United States.
In March, China criticized the “repression” against the video application TikTok by the US for being “an intimidating tactic” that will end up “turning against” the North American country.
In addition, the trip follows the one made to China by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who criticized in Beijing the official Chinese support for some industries, which, in her opinion, is leading to “overcapacity of production that exceeds demand.” China’s internal situation and what the global market can bear. (With information from AFP and EFE and Infobae)
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2024-04-30 02:57:11