Top Chinese diplomat to visit ahead of Biden, Xi meeting
Washington — China’s top diplomat will come to the United States on Thursday for a three-day visit, the latest move by Washington and Beijing to keep highlevel talks open amid tense bilateral relations.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi is scheduled to meet with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan over a range of issues, including the Israel-Hamas conflict, the Ukraine war and a recent vessel collision in the South China Sea, according to senior administration officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to preview the trip.
Wang’s trip to Washington will come just about three weeks ahead of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco, where it’s possible that President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping will meet. The officials did not confirm the leaders’ meeting, nor did they say if Wang’s visit would prepare for such a meeting. Instead, Wang’s trip was described as reciprocal to Blinken’s visit to Beijing in June.
Beijing has yet to confirm if Xi will travel to San Francisco for the annual APEC summit.
Wang plans to make clear China’s “position and principles on the relationship with the U.S. and our legitimate concerns,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said at a daily briefing Tuesday.
China hopes to “jointly push the bilateral relationship back to the track of sound and stable development,” Mao said, reflecting a more upbeat tone than the one heard from Beijing in recent weeks.
U.S.-China relations have deteriorated rapidly since 2018 over issues such as trade imbalance, human rights in the northwestern region of Xinjiang, the militarization of the South China Sea, the rising pressure on the self-governed island of Taiwan and the pandemic. Last November, Biden and Xi met in Bali, Indonesia, on the sidelines of the Group of 20 meeting of leading rich and developing nations. The two sides agreed to resume talks, set up work groups on specific issues and expand person-to-person exchanges.
The relationship had barely warmed up when Washington accused Beijing of flying a spy balloon over the U.S. territory in February, drawing stern protests from Beijing and plunging bilateral relations to another low.