2023-06-18 17:08:22
- Marita Moloney and Anthony Zurcher
- BBC
US officials believe that Blinken’s visit to China aims to reopen communication channels between the two countries
US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken met his Chinese counterpart, Qin Gang, in Beijing, at the start of two-day talks between the two sides.
This is the first visit by a high-ranking US diplomat to China in nearly five years.
US officials said that the main objective of this round of talks is to achieve stability in relations between the two countries, which have been tense to a large extent in recent times.
The current visit comes five months following a visit that was supposed to be made by the US Secretary of State, but was postponed due to the discovery of a suspected Chinese spy balloon in US airspace.
The two leaders shook hands while standing in front of the flags of their countries, and then sat down with their delegations at the negotiating tables to start the meeting.
The greetings exchanged between the two sides were similar to those exchanged by businessmen in business meetings, which confirms the cooling of relations in the past few years between two of the largest superpowers in the world.
The United States lowers the ceiling of its aspirations from this trip, amid statements from both sides that they do not expect to achieve any major progress from these talks.
Officially, the talks are seen as reopening high-level channels of communication and stabilizing relations that have been tense since the balloon accident.
China has conducted military exercises near Taiwan, which Beijing considers an integral part of its territory, while the United States maintains close relations with Taiwan’s democratically elected government.
There is a full agenda for the US-China talks, which includes a meeting with Blinken and his Chinese counterpart, Chen Gang, and his meeting with the chief Chinese foreign policy official, Wang Yi.
The agenda of the talks also includes several issues such as the war in Ukraine, the trade dispute over advanced computer technology, the spread of fentanyl in the United States and China, and the human rights file in China.
Chinese officials were cool regarding Blinken’s visit, wondering if the United States was sincerely seeking to repair relations with their country.
It has not yet been revealed whether the US Secretary of State will meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Blinken is the most senior US government official to visit China since US President Joe Biden took over the country in January 2021.
“If we want to ensure that competition with China does not deviate – as we are doing now – and turn into conflict, then the best starting point is communication,” the US Secretary of State told the media last Friday.
He then expressed the hope that he would meet President Jinping in the next few months.
The summit between President Biden and Xi Jinping in Bali last November allayed fears of a new Cold War between Washington and Beijing, for a while. But since the balloon accident, high-level contact between the two leaders has been rare.
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