Blinken meets Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang on high-stakes diplomatic trip to Beijing
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Sunday met with Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang and top diplomat Wang Yi in Beijing on a high-stakes diplomatic mission to cool U.S.-China tensions that have overshadowed geopolitics in recent months.
The trip by Blinken makes him the highest-level American official to visit China since Joe Biden became U.S. president and the first U.S. secretary of state to make the trip in nearly five years.
Blinken's original travel plans for February were disrupted by news of an alleged Chinese spy balloon flying over U.S. airspace. The U.S. ultimately shot down the alleged spy balloon, and tensions between the world's two largest economies have since remained tense. Beijing insisted the balloon was an unnamed weather tracker that blew off course.
Blinken is set to have a working dinner later Sunday at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse with Qin, who was previosuly China's ambassador to the U.S. Some reports suggest there may also be a meeting with President Xi Jinping on Monday during Blinken's two-day visit.
Expectations for a significant recovery in the U.S.-China relationship, especially as a result of Blinken's trip, remain low. State department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a statement last week that Blinken will discuss the importance of maintaining open lines of communication and will «raise bilateral issues of concern, global and regional matters, and potential cooperation on shared transnational challenges.»
At the annual Shangri-La Dialogue event in Singapore earlier this month, the U.S. defense chief and his Chinese counterpart didn't have a formal meeting. And more broadly, international travel restrictions during the Covid-19 pandemic limited contact between the U.S. and
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