Top US official heads to China to seek ‘guardrails’ in tense ties

WASHINGTON: US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman will travel to China this weekend to address deteriorating ties, the two countries announced Wednesday, in the highest-level visit under President Joe Biden.

The trip is going ahead despite near-daily new rifts between the two powers, including on human rights and cybersecurity, with both sides saying they at least want to try to bring more stability in a relationship often described as the most consequential to the world.

Sherman, who will meet Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Xie Feng, a top China-US relations envoy, hopes to show Beijing ‘what responsible and healthy competition looks like’, State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters.

“We welcome that stiff competition, but we also want to make sure that the playing field is level and, importantly, that competition doesn’t veer into conflict. We want to make sure that this is a relationship that has guardrails,” Price said.

In Beijing, foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said they welcomed the chance for ‘consultation’ over a range of issues but warned Sherman that attempts to discuss ‘China’s internal affairs’ from Xinjiang and Taiwan would fall flat.

“China will make clear to the US its principled stand pertaining to developments in Sino-US relations and its firm attitude on safeguarding its own sovereignty, security and development interests,” Zhao told reporters.

The July 25-26 trip will not have the trappings of a full-fledged official visit. Sherman will not go to Beijing, but instead spend two days starting Sunday in Tianjin, a northeastern port city.

John Kerry, the former secretary of state turned US climate envoy, is the only other senior official from the Biden administration to have visited China, as the world’s two largest emitters pledged to work together on the planetary crisis, despite their differences.

Kerry did not hold talks in the capital either, but met with his climate counterpart in Shanghai, where there were few public sightings of the usually mediafriendly former senator.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security advisor, met in March in Alaska with Wang and top official Yang Jiechi in a visibly tense meeting in which the Chinese side berated the United States in front of the cameras.