The top US diplomat had not visited China in five years. A time when the stormy relationship between the world’s two superpowers has reached such a tense point that analysts often use the tagline of the “new Cold War” to describe a struggle between Washington and Beijing that touches almost all fronts: trade sanctions, technological battle, struggle for dominance of the global narrative, spy games, dangerous military maneuvers…
The Secretary of State of the United States, Antony Blinken, landed early on Sunday in Beijing with the priority objective of reestablishing communication channels, especially in relation to security, seeking regular correspondence between high commands of both armies. This is essential to avoid a conflict in the event of a miscalculation or wrong step by one of the parties.
Blinken’s walk through Beijing is the highest-profile visit by a representative of the Joe Biden administration and materializes the expected signs of a thaw that has occurred in recent months despite all the disputes. “We seek to explore areas of cooperation and establish open communication,” Blinken warned before beginning a trip to the Asian country that could lay the foundations for an upcoming meeting between the US president and his counterpart Xi Jinping. Biden himself confirmed on Saturday that he hopes to meet Xi in the coming months.
“That would be the ideal step that we would all like. We are working on it because, although with many difficulties, diplomacy between the two countries continues to work,” sources from the Chinese Foreign Ministry acknowledge.
The Diaoyutai Guest House, a luxurious residence in Beijing that hosted Richard Nixon 50 years ago during his historic visit to China, has been the epicenter of meetings chosen to discuss a variety of topics ranging from tariffs inherited from the war commercial during the stage of Donald Trump. in the White House, the Chinese position in the Russian invasion of Ukraine -sold by the Chinese regime as “neutral”, but aligned with Putin’s narrative-, or the current fentanyl crisis and whose chemical precursors leave the Asian giant heading for Mexico, where the drug traffickers produce this dangerous synthetic opioid that ends up in the US.
Blinken, who arrived at the compound escorted by Under Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Daniel Kritenbrink and US Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns, was greeted with a handshake by China’s Foreign Minister, Qing Gang. The conversations they held this Sunday were “sincere, substantial and constructive,” according to the US State Department.
“The secretary stressed the importance of diplomacy and keeping channels of communication open on the full range of issues to reduce the risk of misperceptions and miscalculations,” said State Department spokesman Matthew Miller, who He added that Blinken invited Qin to Washington for further talks.
The US secretary will remain in the Chinese capital until Monday, when he will meet with Beijing’s top diplomat, former foreign minister Wang Yi. It has not yet been confirmed whether the Washington representative will also be received by President Xi Jinping.
Blinken and Qin have already shared a call prior to the trip, in which the Chinese minister reproached him that Washington should “show respect” and “stop undermining China’s security and sovereignty,” in a clear reference to the situation in Taiwan.
Precisely, the tensions between the two colossi of the geopolitical board shot up to all-time highs last August after a provocative visit to Taipei by the then Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi. A trip that Beijing interpreted as a violation of its sovereignty and therefore launched the largest invasion drills with live fire on this de facto independent island, but which China considers a separatist province.
Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen’s April tour to California to meet with incumbent House Speaker Kevin McCarthy added fuel to a fire that was already getting too hot after the US shot down over their airspace. a Chinese spy balloon. That crisis that the balloon unleashed definitively broke the (security) exchanges between the two countries and made Blinken postpone the trip to Beijing that he had planned on those dates.
In recent weeks there have been two other incidents that reminded both parties – and the entire world – of the need for senior representatives of the two powers to sit at the same table to reduce tensions. In mid-May, the Pentagon released video showing a Chinese fighter jet flying very close to a US spy plane over the disputed South China Sea, which the White House viewed as a risky and dangerous provocation by Beijing. . A few days later, the US claimed that a Chinese warship had performed a dangerous maneuver by coming within 130 meters of a US destroyer sailing in the Taiwan Strait.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project