- By Anthony Zuricher
- En route with the US Secretary of State
June 17, 2023
Updated 58 minutes ago
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Presidents Xi Jinping and Joe Biden smiled for the cameras at the G20 summit in November
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s first visit to China comes almost five months after a severe rupture in ties over a Chinese spy balloon.
Its original trip was abruptly canceled because the balloon, which China says was monitoring the weather, drifted across mainland America before being destroyed by American military planes.
Mr Blinken’s visit will include meetings with China’s top foreign policy leaders. However, it is not yet known whether he will also meet Chinese President Xi Jinping, who appeared in Beijing on Friday along with Microsoft founder Bill Gates.
The two global superpowers have a long list of issues on their minds, including high-profile disagreements as well as potential areas of cooperation.
Here are three key areas that could be high on the agenda.
repair relationships
First and foremost, Mr Blinken’s visit is about restoring diplomatic interactions of any kind.
The first icebreak occurred last month when senior US officials met in Vienna, Austria.
But Mr Blinken is the most senior official in the Biden administration to travel to China, and it is the first visit by a US Secretary of State to Beijing since October 2018.
“Now is a good time to start talking again because that alone reduces the risk of conflict,” Deputy Assistant to the President and Coordinator for Indo-Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell said in a briefing ahead of the trip.
“We must not allow the disagreements that could divide us to prevent us from moving forward on global priorities that require all of us to work together.”
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The Chinese balloon has been spotted in Montana
However, the Chinese reaction to Blinken’s visit was somewhat chilly.
In the official Chinese report of a phone call with Mr Blinken on Wednesday evening, Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang reportedly told him that “it is very clear who is responsible for the recent deterioration in relations”.
“The United States should respect China’s concerns, stop interfering in China’s internal affairs, and stop subverting China’s sovereignty, security and development interests in the name of competition,” Mr Qin reportedly said.
The US downplayed all major announcements from that visit. In diplomatic parlance, the only “outcome” of the meetings seems to be that the meetings took place at all.
Don’t expect any breakthrough or change in the way the two interact, said Daniel J. Kritenbrink, the State Department’s senior East Asia diplomat.
Should the meeting lead to further interaction between US and Chinese officials, both sides could build on it.
defuse trade conflicts
President Biden’s relations with China got off to a difficult start, partly because he was unwilling to overturn the trade measures enacted by his predecessor, Donald Trump.
These include billions of dollars in import duties on products made in China.
In some areas, Mr. Biden has pushed even harder by restricting US exports of computer chips to China to maintain US superiority in the most advanced electronics technologies.
China responded with its own ban on computer memory chips sold by Micron, the largest US manufacturer.
Mr Campbell acknowledged China’s concerns but said the US would defend and explain what it has done so far and what may lie ahead.
If computer technology is an area destined for fierce competition between the two superpowers, the illicit drug trade could offer more scope for cooperation.
The US wants to limit exports of Chinese-made chemical components used to make fentanyl, a synthetic opioid many times more potent than heroin.
The rate of fentanyl drug overdose deaths in the United States has more than tripled in the past seven years.
“This is an absolutely critical and urgent issue for the United States,” Mr Kritenbrink said – but it is one that comes with its own set of challenges.
avert war
After the balloon accident, there were reports that China was considering sending weapons to Russia, where they would immediately be used in the war against Ukraine.
US government officials have recently backed down from those allegations, removing an issue that had been particularly contentious for the two nations that risked turning the Ukraine-Russia conflict into a US-China proxy war could be.
Image Credit: Lindle Markwell/BBC
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Remote Philippine islands are at the center of US-China tensions
However, expect Mr Blinken to repeat warnings addressed to the Chinese in Vienna that there would be serious consequences if China provided military and financial aid to Russia.
US and Chinese warships engage in a high-risk battle game in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea. China claims the area as its own, while the US insists it is international waters.
Mr Blinken and his diplomatic team said his goal with this trip was to “reduce” tensions and renewed communication was the starting point.
Achieving more could be a tall order for now – and broader cooperation could become more difficult for Mr. Biden as anti-Chinese rhetoric in Washington is sure to intensify as the 2024 presidential election approaches.
A mutually satisfactory outcome of this journey might simply be the opening of channels of communication that prevent an incident from becoming a military conflict.