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Antony Blinken (left) and Chinese diplomatic chief Wang Yi in Beijing on Monday, June 19, 2023.
AFP
Foreign Secretary Anthony Blinken will meet China’s diplomatic chief in Beijing on Monday and may meet President Xi Jinping on the last day of a rare trip aimed at easing bilateral tensions.
The US official met with his Chinese counterpart Qin Gang on Sunday for seven and a half hours, longer than expected, and the two sides agreed to maintain contact between them in order to avoid any conflict.
Neither side has confirmed a meeting between Anthony Blinken and Xi Jinping, whose meeting with US President Joe Biden in Bali in November raised cautious hopes of a thaw in relations. But an interview between the secretary of state and his Chinese host seems likely, especially after an interview in Beijing last week between Xi Jinping and another American, former Microsoft boss and philanthropist Bill Gates.
“You are the first American friend I have met this year,” the Chinese leader told him, according to the New China News Agency. “We have always placed our trust in the American people and hope that the friendship between the two peoples will continue,” he said, eager to send a message of peace.
Meanwhile, Anthony Blinken began a closed-door meeting on Monday morning with Wang Yi, who dominates Chinese diplomacy because of his activities in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), while Qin Gang holds the position of foreign minister. affairs. Foreign Affairs.
In addition to the more difficult issue of US-Taiwan relations, bilateral relations remain tense on a large number of issues. Among them are competition in technologies, US sanctions targeting Chinese digital companies, trade, the treatment of the Muslim minority of Uyghurs in China or even Chinese claims in the South China Sea.
U.S. officials have said they do not expect major developments from Antony Blinken’s visit, other than making sure lines of communication remain open to avoid a major conflict. The two countries announced on Sunday that Qin Gang had accepted the US Secretary of State’s offer to visit the US on a yet-to-be-determined date.
A State Department spokesman said Sunday’s exchanges between the two men, which ended with a garden party in the evening at the Teoyudai Diplomatic Complex, were “candid, substantive and constructive.” Antony Blinken underlined “the importance of diplomacy in all issues and maintaining open lines of communication to minimize the risk of misunderstandings and miscalculations”.
China’s foreign minister lamented with his US counterpart that Beijing-Washington relations are “at their lowest point” since the establishment of diplomatic ties in 1979, according to a Chinese diplomatic account. “It is not compatible with the fundamental interests of the people of our two countries or the general expectations of the international community,” he asserted.
But the Chinese diplomat forcefully reaffirmed his country’s position on the Taiwan issue, which Beijing sees as a continuing rapprochement between Washington and Taiwanese officials from a pro-independence party in recent years. “The Taiwan issue is at the core of China’s fundamental interests, the most important issue and the most important danger in China-US relations,” Qin Gang said, according to his ministry.
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