The US and China have pledged to stabilize their badly deteriorated ties during a critical visit to Beijing by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who met yesterday with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平).
Xi pronounced himself satisfied with progress made during the talks in Beijing, but Blinken told reporters that China refused to resume military-to-military communications, a US priority.
It remains to be seen whether the two nations can resolve their most important disagreements, many of which have international financial, security and stability implications.
Photo: AFP
The two sides expressed a willingness to hold more talks, but there was little indication that either is prepared to bend from its positions on issues including Taiwan, trade, human rights conditions in China and Hong Kong, Chinese military assertiveness in the South China Sea and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Blinken said that Washington had set limited objectives for the trip and achieved them, adding that he had raised the issue of military-to-military communications “repeatedly.”
“It is absolutely vital that we have these kinds of communications,” he said. “This is something we’re going to keep working on.”
The US has said that since 2021, China has declined or failed to respond to more than a dozen requests from the US Department of Defense for top-level dialogues.
According to a transcript of the meeting with Blinken, Xi pronounced himself pleased with the outcome of Blinken’s earlier meetings with two top Chinese diplomats and said the two nations had agreed to resume a program of understandings that he and US President Joe Biden agreed to at a meeting in Bali, Indonesia, last year.
“The Chinese side has made our position clear, and the two sides have agreed to follow through the common understandings President Biden and I had reached in Bali,” Xi said.
That agenda had been thrown into jeopardy, notably after the US shot down a Chinese surveillance balloon over its airspace in February, and amid escalated military activity in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea. Combined with disputes over human rights, trade and opiate production, the list of problem areas is daunting, but Xi suggested the worst could be over.
“The two sides have also made progress and reached agreement on some specific issues,” Xi said without elaborating, according to a transcript of the remarks released by the US Department of State. “This is very good.”
“I hope that through this visit, Mr Secretary you will make more positive contributions to stabilizing China-US relations,” Xi added.
In his remarks to Xi during the 35-minute session at the Great Hall of the People, which was not announced until an hour before it started, Blinken said: “The United States and China have an obligation and responsibility to manage our relationship.”
“The United States is committed to doing that,” Blinken said. “It’s in the interest of the United States, in the interests of China and in the interest of the world.”
Blinken described his earlier discussions with senior Chinese officials as “candid and constructive.”
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