Washington: US officials announced on Friday that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will visit China next week, rescheduling a trip that was postponed in February following a controversy over a rumoured spy balloon.
On condition of anonymity, US officials said that Blinken is scheduled to arrive in Beijing on June 18. This will be the first trip to China by a senior US diplomat since Mike Pompeo visited in October 2018.
His travel has not been formally announced by the State Department. John Kirby, a spokesman for the National Security Council, recently stated without providing further details that the United States would announce travel by senior officials "in the near future."
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Presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping agreed to work to prevent high tensions from spiralling out of control during a meeting in Bali in November.
Blinken abruptly postponed a trip that was planned for early February after the US claimed to have found and later shot down a Chinese surveillance balloon that was flying over the US mainland, infuriating US lawmakers and prompting Beijing to deny the claims.
However, the two sides have more recently attempted to defuse tensions once more, including during a lengthy, closed-door meeting between Wang Yi, the top Chinese diplomat, and Biden's national security adviser Jake Sullivan in Vienna last month.
In recent years, tensions between the two largest economies in the world have risen significantly, particularly over Taiwan, the autonomous democracy that Beijing claims and hasn't ruled out annexing by force.
The two nations are also at odds over trade, human rights, and China's increasingly aggressive posture in the region.
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However, as opposed to the more openly antagonistic stance adopted at the end of his predecessor Donald Trump's administration, Biden has focused on limited areas for cooperation with China, such as climate change.
