Antony Blinken begins China visit that spy balloon put off

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Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, arrived in China on Sunday on the highest-level trip by a US official in nearly five years – one due to have happened four months ago, until a Chinese spy balloon was caught flying over US soil.

Neither side expects breakthroughs during Blinken’s two-day visit, with the world’s two largest economies at odds on an array of issues such as trade, technology and regional security.

The two countries have increasingly voiced an interest in seeking greater stability and see a narrow window before elections next year both in the United States and Taiwan, the self-ruling democracy that Beijing has not ruled out seizing by force.

After a cordial summit between presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping in Bali in November, Blinken’s subsequent China visit was abruptly postponed by the Chinese spy balloon affair that began unfolding in January.

Speaking in the US capital before his departure, Blinken said he would seek to “responsibly manage our relationship” by finding ways to avoid “miscalculations” between the countries.

“Intense competition requires sustained diplomacy to ensure that competition does not veer into confrontation or conflict,” he said.

Blinken was speaking alongside the Singaporean foreign minister, Vivian Balakrishnan, who said the region wanted the US both to stay as a power and to find ways to coexist with a rising China.

Blinken’s “trip is essential, but not sufficient”, Balakrishnan said. “There are fundamental differences in outlook, in values. And it takes time for mutual respect and strategic trust to be built in.”

As part of the Biden administration’s focus on keeping allies close, Blinken spoke by telephone with his counterparts from both Japan and South Korea during his 20-hour trans-Pacific journey.

Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, travelled separately to Tokyo for three-way meetings involving Japan, South Korea and the Philippines.

In recent months the US has reached deals on troop deployments in southern Japan and the northern Philippines, both strategically close to Taiwan.

Beijing carried out major military drills around Taiwan in August, seen as practice for an invasion, after a visit by Nancy Pelosi, then speaker of the US House of Representatives.

In April, China launched three days of war games after the Taiwanese president, Tsai Ing-wen, visited the US and met the current speaker, Kevin McCarthy.

Ahead of Blinken’s visit, the Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said the US needed to “respect China’s core concerns” and work together with Beijing.

“The US needs to give up the illusion of dealing with China ‘from a position of strength’. China and the US must develop relations on the basis of mutual respect and equality, respect their difference in history, culture, social system and development path.”

Blinken is the first top US diplomat to visit Beijing since a brief stop in 2018 by his predecessor Mike Pompeo, who championed confronting China in the final years of Donald Trump’s presidency.

The Biden administration has kept in place Trump’s hard line in practice, if not tone, and has gone further in areas, including working to ban exports to China of high-end semiconductors that have military uses.

Unlike Trump, who is running again for president, the Biden administration has said it is willing to work with China on narrow areas of cooperation such as climate – as Beijing sweats in record mid-June temperatures.

Danny Russel, who was the top diplomat on east Asia during Barack Obama’s second term, said that each side had priorities – with China seeking to forestall additional US restrictions on technology or support for Taiwan, and the US eager to prevent an incident that could spiral into a military confrontation.

“Blinken’s brief visit will not bring resolution to any of the big issues in the US-China relationship or even necessarily to the small ones. Neither will it stop either side from continuing with their competitive agendas,” said Russel, now a vice-president at the Asia Society Policy Institute.

“But his visit may well restart badly needed face-to-face dialogue and send a signal that both countries are moving from angry rhetoric at the press podium to sober discussions behind closed doors.”

Xi offered a hint of a possible willingness to reduce tensions, saying in a meeting with Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates on Friday that the US and China could cooperate to “benefit our two countries.”

“I believe that the foundation of Sino-US relations lies in the people,” Xi said to Gates. “Under the current world situation, we can carry out various activities that benefit our two countries, the people of our countries, and the entire human race.”

Biden told White House reporters on Saturday he was “hoping that over the next several months, I’ll be meeting with Xi again and talking about legitimate differences we have, but also how … to get along”. Chances could come at a G20 leaders’ gathering in September in New Delhi and at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in November in San Francisco that the US is hosting.

With Agence France-Presse and Reuters