Chinese leader Xi Jinping and top American diplomat Antony Blinken will meet in Beijing on Monday, aUS State Department official said, in a potentially crucial step toward patching US-China ties which cratered in the wake of a dispute over a Chinese surveillance balloon earlier this year.
Blinken is the first US Secretary of State to visit Beijing in five years and his talks with senior Chinese officials are seen as a key litmus test for whether some sort of detente can be forged at a time of lingering distrust.
Uncertainty around whether Xi and Blinken would meet during the two-day visit further highlighted the fraught US-China relations and a failure to schedule a face to face would have been seen by Washington as a slight, breaking with a number of previous visits from top American diplomats.
The meeting was only publicly announced by the US late afternoon Beijing time on Monday.
The two global powers have been increasingly at loggerheads over a host of issues ranging from Beijings close ties with Moscow to American efforts to limit the sale of advanced technologies to China.
Key among those concerns has been repairing fractured lines of communication, which have broken down over the past year, especially when it comes to high-level military exchanges raising concerns in Washington that a mistake or accident could quickly spin into conflict.
Earlier this year a Chinese surveillance balloon detected floating across the US and hovering over sensitive military sites before ultimately being shot down by an American fighter plane sent relations plunging to a new low and resulted in Blinken scrapping an earlier Beijing visit.
This time, the diplomatic mission went forward.
But a roughly three-hour meeting between Blinken and Chinas top foreign affairs adviser Wang Yi Monday morning underscored the deep challenges in overcoming the mistrust and friction that has come to characterize the relationship.
A choice needs to be made
Repeating Beijings typical rhetoric, Wang blamed Washingtons wrong perception of China as the root cause of the decline in the two sides relations and demanded the US stop suppressing Chinas technological development and hyping the China threat, according to a readout from Chinese state broadcaster CCTV.
We must reverse the downward spiral of China-US relations, promote a return to a healthy and stable track, and jointly find the right way for China and the United States to co-exist in the new era, Wang said, adding that Blinkens visit came at a critical juncture in US-China relations, where a choice needs to be made between dialogue or confrontation, cooperation or conflict.
Wang also reiterated that Taiwan is one of one of Chinas core interests, over which it has no room for compromise or backdown.
The self-ruling democratic island, which Chinas ruling Communist Party claims but has never controlled, has increasingly been another flashpoint in the US-China relationship.
During the meeting, Blinken underscored the need for the countries to responsibly manage their competition through open channels of communication to ensure it does not veer into conflict, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a statement.
The US would continue to use its diplomacy to stand up for the interests and values of the American people, Blinken said, according to the statement, which described the talks as candid and productive and said they including discussion of potential cooperation on shared transnational challenges.
Advancing dialogue?
Overall, Wangs comments took a more combative tone than those of Chinas Foreign Minister Qin Gang, who met with Blinken the previous day. Qin said both sides agreed to advance dialogue, exchanges and cooperation and maintain high-level interactions, according to a readout from Beijing.
Blinkens Sunday meeting with Qin, which stretched more than five hours and then wrapped with a working dinner, resulted in progress on a number of fronts, with both sides showing a desire to reduce tensions, a senior State Department official told reporters Sunday.
Profound differences between the US and China, however, were also clear during the meeting, the official added.
Neither side have mentioned concrete agreements so far.
While Qin holds the title of Foreign Minister, he wields less power than Wang, who directs the countrys foreign policy through his position among partys core leadership.
Blinkens original scheduled visit in early February had been agreed on as a follow-up to an amicable face-to-face between US President Joe Biden and Chinas Xi on the sidelines of the G20 in Bali in November.
That meeting the first in person between the two leaders as presidents was seen a pivotal step in restoring certain lines of communication, which Beijing last year severed last year following a visit from then-US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan.
Both the US and China have played down expectations of a major breakthrough during Blinkens visit.
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