Beijing: At 4:30 pm, Xi Jinping, the president of China, and Antony Blinken, the secretary of state of the United States, will meet. As America's top diplomat concluded a two-day trip to Beijing with the aim of reducing escalating tensions, the State Department announced Monday.
Though a meeting between Blinken and Xi was anticipated, neither party made a firm commitment until an hour before the crucial talks, which are thought to be essential to the mission's outcome. The effort to restore and maintain senior-level communications would have suffered greatly from the Chinese leader's slight.
Blinken is the first secretary of state to travel to China in five years and the highest-ranking American official to do so since President Joe Biden took office. Senior US and Chinese officials are anticipated to visit soon after him, possibly including a meeting between Xi and Biden in the near future.
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On the second and final day of Blinken's crucial meetings with top Chinese officials, he will meet with Xi. The two sides have so far indicated a desire to communicate, but they have not shown much willingness 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 about 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.
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The US had a duty to stop "the spiralling decline of China-US relations to push it back to a healthy and stable track," according to the statement. 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," it said.
Despite Blinken's presence in China, he and other US officials had downplayed the likelihood of any significant progress being made on the most difficult problems facing the two largest economies on the planet.
Instead, these officials have emphasised how crucial it is for the two nations to build and maintain better 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 nearly six-hour meeting on Sunday, Blinken and Qin Gang, the foreign minister of China, announced that high-level negotiations would continue. However, there was no indication that any of their most contentious disagreements were getting any closer to being settled.
Although both sides claimed that Qin had accepted Blinken's invitation to visit Washington, Beijing made it clear that "the China-US relationship is at the lowest point since its establishment." US government officials generally concur with that opinion.
Since President Joe Biden took office, Blinken is the highest-ranking American official to visit China, and his two-day trip comes after his initial plans to visit China were postponed in February following the shootdown of a Chinese surveillance balloon over the US
Before departing for Beijing, Blinken stated that Biden and Xi had promised to improve communication "exactly so that we can make sure we are communicating as clearly as possible to avoid potential misunderstandings and miscommunications."
His discussions might open the door for Biden and Xi to meet in the upcoming months. Biden stated on Saturday that he hoped to meet with Xi in the upcoming months to discuss the numerous issues that separate them. There are many issues on this lengthy list, including trade with Taiwan, the state of human rights in China and Hong Kong, Chinese military assertiveness in the South China Sea, and Russia's conflict in Ukraine.
Blinken also demanded that the Chinese release American nationals who were detained and take action to stop the production and export of the fentanyl precursors that are causing the opioid crisis in the US during his meetings on Sunday.
In a meeting with Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft Corp., Xi hinted at a potential willingness to ease tensions by saying that cooperation between the US and China can "benefit our two countries."
Since Blinken's trip was postponed in February, there have been a few high-profile engagements. While China's commerce minister visited the US in May, CIA Director William Burns visited China. Additionally, Wang Yi, a senior Chinese foreign policy adviser, met with Jake Sullivan, Biden's national security adviser, in Vienna in May.
However, those have been interspersed with frenzied exchanges of words between the two sides over the Taiwan Strait, their larger plans for the Indo-Pacific, China's refusal to denounce Russia for its war against Ukraine, and US accusations that Beijing is attempting to expand its global surveillance capabilities, including in Cuba.
Additionally, earlier this month, in a sign 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 counter China's expanding influence and ambitions, the national security advisers of the United States, Japan, and the Philippines met for the first time last week and decided to strengthen their defence cooperation.
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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.