Beijing CNN –
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with China’s top diplomats on the final day of a key visit to Beijing aimed at stabilizing ties faltering amid a row over a Chinese surveillance balloon.
All eyes are on whether Washington’s envoy will meet Chinese leader Xi Jinping later in the day in what could be a crucial step in resolving the shattered ties.
With world powers increasingly at odds, there is widespread international interest in whether Blinken’s trip will ease tensions between the world’s two largest economies.
Blinken and China’s top diplomatic counterpart Wang Yi began the talks on Monday morning and posed for photos at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing before entering the closed-door discussion.
Both sides have come to the visit — the first by a US secretary of state to China in five years — with the express aim of rectifying their relationship, which has been plagued by a variety of issues ranging from Beijing’s close ties with Moscow to deep ones burdened are American efforts to restrict sales of advanced technologies to China.
Monday is expected to be a major test of how far the two powers can go to stabilize fractured lines of communication that have collapsed over the past year, particularly when it comes to high-level military exchanges – raising fears in Washington lets that a mistake or an accident could quickly lead to a conflict.
Tensions mounted on the first day of Blinken’s visit on Sunday. Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang said during his meeting with the US envoy that China-US relations have reached the “lowest point” since diplomatic ties were resumed in 1979, Beijing said.
Whether Blinken also meets with Xi will be a key indicator of China’s interest in taking steps to rebuild that relationship.
Ahead of the meeting, Beijing tried to blame Washington for deteriorating relations and warned the country against “interfering in China’s internal affairs.”
Previous trips by America’s top diplomats have often included face-to-face meetings with China’s top politicians. Neither side has confirmed whether such a meeting will take place.
Blinken’s Sunday meeting with Qin, which lasted more than five hours and then ended with a working lunch, prompted progress “on multiple fronts,” with both sides showing a “desire to ease tensions,” a senior State Department official told reporters Sunday.
However, the meeting also highlighted “profound differences” between the US and China, the official added.
China called the Sunday talks “frank, detailed and constructive” in its statement, noting that both sides agreed to “advance dialogue, exchanges and cooperation” and “maintain high-level interaction.”
Qin also called on the US to “adopt an objective and rational view of China” and “made clear demands” on US policy toward Taiwan, the island democracy that China’s ruling Communist Party has claimed but never controlled.
Although Qin holds the title of foreign minister, he wields less power than Wang, who guides China’s foreign policy through his position in the party’s core leadership.
Both the US and China downplayed expectations of a major breakthrough during Blinken’s visit.
Ahead of the meeting, Washington has been careful to manage expectations, and a senior State Department official told reporters last week he doesn’t expect a “long list of outcomes.”
Blinken’s visit was originally scheduled for early February and agreed to follow a friendly face-to-face meeting between US President Joe Biden and China’s Xi on the sidelines of the G20 Bali Summit in November.
That meeting — the first in-person meeting between the two leaders as presidents — was seen as a crucial step in restoring certain lines of communication that Beijing had cut following a visit by then-US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan last year .
Blinken’s earlier-planned visit was postponed after a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon was spotted crossing the American mainland, further escalating tensions between the two powers, though China issued a rare statement of regret, claiming the incident was an accident.