Blinken to see Xi, State Department hopes to defuse tensions between the US and China

As America’s top diplomat ended off a two-day trip to Beijing aimed at reducing escalating tensions, the State Department said that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken would meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping at 4:30 pm on Monday.

Although a Blinken-Xi meeting had been anticipated, neither party had made that commitment until barely an hour before the crucial conversations that are thought to be essential to the mission’s success. A rejection by the Chinese leader would have represented a significant blow to the endeavour to preserve and reestablish senior-level relations.

Blinken is the first secretary of state to go to China in five years and the highest-ranking American official to do so since President Joe Biden entered office. Senior US and Chinese officials are anticipated to go to both countries after his visit, perhaps including a meeting between Xi and Biden in the near future.

On the second and last day of Blinken’s crucial talks with top Chinese officials, he will meet President Xi. The two sides have so far shown a desire to communicate but little readiness to budge from their rigid stances, which have elevated tensions.

According to a US Official, Blinken met with Wang Yi, China’s top diplomat, earlier on Monday for almost three hours.

Blinken and Wang greeted each other and sat for their interview without speaking to the media.

Blinken’s visit “coincides with a critical juncture in China-US Relations, and it is necessary to make a choice between dialogue or confrontation, cooperation or conflict,” the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement. It also blamed the “US Side’s erroneous perception of China, leading to incorrect policies towards China” for the current “low point” in relations.

According to the statement, the US had a duty to stop “the spiralling decline of China-US Relations to push it back to a healthy and stable track” and Wang had “demanded that the US Stop hyping up the China threat theory’, lift illegal unilateral sanctions against China, abandon suppression of China’s technological development, and refrain from arbitrary interference in China’s internal affairs.”

Despite Blinken’s presence in China, he and other US officials have downplayed the likelihood of any major progress being made on the most difficult problems affecting the two biggest economies on the globe.

Instead, senior officials have emphasised how crucial it is for the two nations to build and maintain improved communication channels.

According to the State Department, Blinken “underscored the importance of responsibly managing the competition between the PRC and the United States through open channels of communication to ensure competition does not veer into conflict.”

Following their almost six-hour meeting on Sunday, Blinken and Qin Gang, the foreign minister of China, announced that high-level negotiations will continue. However, there was no indication that any of their most contentious disagreements were getting any closer to being settled.

Both sides claimed that Qin had accepted Blinken’s offer to visit Washington, but Beijing insisted that “the China-US Relationship is at the lowest point since its establishment.” Many US government officials agree with that attitude.

Blinken is the highest-ranking American official to visit China since President Joe Biden entered office. His two-day trip follows the cancellation of his earlier travel plans to China in February as a result of the shooting down of a Chinese surveillance balloon over the US.

Before departing for Beijing, Blinken said that Biden and Xi had promised to strengthen communication “exactly so that we can make sure we are communicating as clearly as possible to avoid potential misunderstandings and miscommunications.”

His discussions could open the door for Biden and Xi to meet in the next months. Biden said on Saturday that he wanted to meet with Xi in the next months to discuss the several issues that separate them.

Disagreements on this extensive list range from commerce with Taiwan, to the state of human rights in China and Hong Kong, to Chinese military aggression in the South China Sea, to Russia’s conflict in Ukraine.

In his discussions on Sunday, Blinken also urged the Chinese to free American nationals who were imprisoned and to take action to stop the export and manufacture of fentanyl precursors, which are a major contributor to the opioid problem in the United States.

In a meeting with Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft Corp., Xi hinted at a potential readiness to ease tensions by saying that cooperation between the US and China might “benefit our two countries.”

There have been a few high-level interactions since Blinken’s trip was postponed in February. While China’s trade minister visited the US in May, CIA Director William Burns visited China. Additionally, Wang Yi, a top Chinese foreign policy advisor, met with Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, in Vienna in May.

But those have been interrupted by exchanges of vehement words between the two sides regarding the Taiwan Strait, their larger plans for the Indo-Pacific, China’s refusal to denounce Russia for its war against Ukraine, and US allegations from Washington that Beijing is attempting to increase its global surveillance capabilities, including in Cuba.

Additionally, earlier this month, in a hint of ongoing dissatisfaction, China’s defence minister rejected a request from US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin for a meeting outside of a security symposium in Singapore.

To fight China’s expanding influence and aspirations, the national security advisors of the United States, Japan, and the Philippines met for the first time last week and decided to increase their defence cooperation.

As China moves swiftly to increase its diplomatic footprint, particularly in the Indian Ocean and Pacific island nations, where it has opened or plans to open at least five new embassies over the next year, the Biden administration has signed an agreement with Australia and Britain to provide the first with nuclear-powered submarines.

The deal is a component of an 18-month-old nuclear alliance known as AUKUS, which stands for Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States.