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US Secretary of State Antony Blinken sat down with China’s top diplomat on the final day of a high stakes visit to Beijing aimed at stabilizing relations, with all eyes on whether Washington’s envoy will meet Chinese leader Xi Jinping later in the day.
The global powers are increasingly at loggerheads and there is widespread international interest in whether Blinken’s trip can secure a cooling of tensions between the world’s two largest economies.
Blinken and China’s top diplomatic counterpart Wang Yi began talks Monday morning, posing for photos at Beijing’s Diaoyutai State Guesthouse before heading into closed door discussions.
Both sides have come into the visit – the first by a US Secretary of State to China in five years – with an expressed goal of course correcting their relationship, which has been deeply strained by a host of issues ranging from Beijing’s close ties with Moscow to American efforts to limit the sale of advanced technologies to China.
Monday is expected to be a key test for how far the two powers can go to stabilize their 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.
Inflamed tensions formed the backdrop to the first day of Blinken’s visit Sunday, with Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang saying during his meeting with the United States’ envoy that the China-US relationship was at the “lowest point” since diplomatic ties were re-established in 1979, according to Beijing.
