[1/2]China’s Director of the Office of the Central Commission on Foreign Affairs Wang Yi attends a trilateral meeting with Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov July 12, 2023 in Jakarta, Indonesia. Portal/Ajeng Dinar Ulfiana
July 12 (Portal) – US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will meet top Chinese diplomat Wang Yi on Thursday as officials gather in Indonesia for ASEAN meetings, the State Department said while announcing the latest in a series of interactions between the rival superpowers .
Wang is representing China at the meetings in Jakarta attended by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and partner countries after Beijing said Foreign Minister Qin Gang would not attend due to ill health.
Blinken met Qin and Wang in Beijing last month, marking the first visit to China by a US secretary of state in five years. The aim was to defuse the intense rivalry between the superpowers, which are also the world’s two largest economies
US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen visited China earlier this month and Climate Commissioner John Kerry will visit next week.
Wang, the Chinese Communist Party’s foreign policy chief, is above Qin, who as foreign minister is the government’s foreign affairs chief.
China’s ambassador to the United States held a rare meeting with the top US defense official for Asia at the Pentagon on Wednesday, the Pentagon said. The talks followed US criticism of China’s reluctance to engage in military communications.
Analysts see the meetings as part of an effort to clear the way for a summit between President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping later in the year, but tensions remain high.
Blinken’s last meeting with Wang Yi in Beijing appeared to be the most sensitive of his visit, with Wang telling him the “root cause” of their discord was “US misconceptions about China” and its “misguided China policy,” according to a Chinese one Advertisement.
As Washington seeks to weaken ties, which Beijing has described as the lowest level since diplomatic ties began, the two sides remain at odds over a range of trade, security and geopolitical issues.
Referring to Taiwan, the democratic island Beijing claims as its own, Wang’s tone was particularly sharp in his last meeting with Blinken.
“China has no room for compromise or concession,” Wang said, according to the reading.
The US is required by law to provide Taiwan with the means to protect itself, but has long maintained a policy of “strategic ambiguity” about whether it would respond militarily to an attack on Taiwan, something Beijing refused to rule out.
Last week, senior State Department official for East Asia Daniel Kritenbrink said Blinken would work with ASEAN members in Jakarta to respond to “an uptick in unhelpful, coercive and irresponsible Chinese actions.”
Reporting by David Brunnstrom and Simon Lewis; Additional reporting by Dan Whitcomb; Edited by Michael Perry and Raju Gopalakrishnan
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