US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s first visit to China on Sunday comes nearly five months after a major rupture in relations over a Chinese asset balloon.
His original trip was suddenly cancelled because the balloon, which China says was covering rainfall, drifted across the international US before being destroyed by American military aircraft.
Mr Blinken’s visit includes meetings with China’s top foreign policy officers but there’s no word yet on whether he’ll also meet Chinese President Xi Jinping, who appeared with Microsoft author Bill Gates in Beijing on Friday.
The two global superpowers have a long list of issues that concern them, including high- profile dissensions as well as implicit areas of co-operation.
Then are three crucial areas that could be at the top of the docket.
healing relations
First and foremost, Mr Blinken’s visit is aboutre-establishing politic relations of any kind.
Last month there was an original breaking of the ice when elderly US officers met in Vienna, Austria.
But Mr Blinken is the most elderly Biden administration functionary to travel to China, and it marks the first visit by a US clerk of state to Beijing since October 2018.
Now is a good time to be talking again because that in itself reduces the threat of conflict, said Deputy Assistant to the chairman and fellow for Indo- Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell, in apre-trip briefing.
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” We can not let the dissensions that might divide us stand in the way of moving forward on the global precedences that bear us all to work together.”
The Chinese response to the Blinken visit has been kindly frosty, still.
In the sanctioned Chinese account of a call with Mr Blinken on Wednesday night, Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang is reported to have told him that” it is veritably clear who’s to condemn” for the recent deterioration in relations.
” The United States should admire China’s enterprises, stop snooping in China’s internal affairs, and stop undermining China’s sovereignty, security and development interests in the name of competition,” Mr Qin reportedly said.
The US has played down any significant adverts coming out of this visit. It seems the only” deliverable” from the meetings, in politic parlance, will be that the meetings have happed at all.
Do not anticipate some kind of advance or metamorphosis in the way that the two deal with one another, said Daniel J Kritenbrink, the State Department’s elderly East Asia diplomat.
still, that would be commodity both sides could make on, If the meeting leads to farther commerce between US and Chinese officers.
Easing trade conflicts
President Biden’s relations with China started off on a rocky note, in part because he has been unintentional to cancel trade measures legislated by his precursor, Donald Trump.
That includes billions of bones in import tariffs on Chinese- made products.
In some areas, Mr Biden has squeezed indeed harder, with restrictions on US computer- chip exports to China in an trouble to maintain US superiority in the most advanced electronics technologies.
China responded by making its own ban on computer memory chips vended by Micron, the largest US manufacturer.
The US is beating China in the battle for chips
Mr Campbell conceded China’s enterprises but said the US would defend and explain what it’s done so far and what could lie ahead.
still, the lawless medicine trade may give further room for co-operation, If computer technology is an area fated for fierce competition between the two superpowers.
The US wants to limit the import of Chinese- produced chemical factors used to make fentanyl, a synthetic opioid numerous times more important than heroin.
The rate of US medicine overdose deaths involving fentanyl has further than tripled in the last seven times.
” This is an absolutely critical and critical issue for the United States,” said Mr Kritenbrink- but it’s one that presents its own challenges.
preventing war
After the balloon incident, there were reports that China was considering transferring munitions to Russia, where they would be incontinently used in the war against Ukraine.
US government officers have backed down from those allegations of late, removing what could have been a particularly contentious issue for the two nations that risked turning the Ukraine- Russia conflict into a makeshift war between the US and China.
But anticipate Mr Blinken to echo warnings given to the Chinese in Vienna that there would be serious consequences if China gives military and fiscal backing to Russia.
US and Chinese warships have been facing off in a high- stakes game of funk over the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea. China claims the area as their own, while the US insists they’re transnational waters.
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Mr Blinken and his politic platoon have said that his thing in this trip is to”de-risk” the pressures, and renewed communication is the place to start.
Achieving further may be a altitudinous task for now- and more expansive co-operation could come more delicate for Mr Biden asanti-China rhetoric in Washington is sure to toast up when the 2024 presidential choices approach.
A satisfactory outgrowth from this trip for both sides might be simply the opening of communication channels that help an incident leading to military conflict.
