U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken plans to visit China in the coming weeks for talks with top officials, possibly including President Xi Jinping, people familiar with the matter said, as the U.S. looks to resume high-level communication despite continued tensions.
Blinken had planned to visit Beijing in February but scrapped the trip after the U.S. identified what it said was a Chinese spy balloon crossing over the continental U.S. The exact timing for Blinken’s visit is still fluid, according to the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private deliberations.
A State Department spokesman said the agency had no travel to announce and that Blinken’s previously scrapped visit would take place when conditions allow.
The visit would be part of President Joe Biden’s effort to restore some normalcy to a relationship that continues to be roiled by tense military encounters, punitive economic measures and accusations from both sides that the other is jeopardizing global stability.
On Monday, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby warned of a “growing aggressiveness” by China after interceptions of a U.S. ship and surveillance aircraft in recent weeks. “It won’t be long before somebody gets hurt,” Kirby said. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin shot back with criticism that the U.S. is “sending warships halfway around the world to China’s doorstep in a provocative way.”
At the same time, Kirby said the two sides were making progress in opening other channels towards setting up visits for U.S. Cabinet secretaries.
While China rebuffed U.S. efforts to arrange a meeting between the two countries’ defense ministers at a forum in Singapore last week, high-level contact has resumed in other areas.
Daniel Kritenbrink, the top U.S. State Department official for Asia, had “candid” talks with Chinese officials on Monday. His trip followed two days of talks between National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and his counterpart Wang Yi last month and a visit by CIA Director William Burns, while top commerce and trade officials have also met recently.
With China’s armed forces coming into more frequent contact with U.S. military assets in Asia, the “potential for miscalculation” is “real and growing,” but Chinese officials have rebuffed U.S. attempts to formalize communications during a potential crisis, White House Indo-Pacific coordinator Kurt Campbell said on Tuesday.
“During the Cold War, we managed to effectively create mechanisms that would allow for crisis communication in moments of unintended conflict or tension,” Campbell said at an event hosted by the Hudson Institute think-tank. “It’d be fair to say we’ve been unable to do that yet with China. China has been reluctant to embrace and engage in some of these mechanisms.”
In response to reporters’ questions Tuesday, Kirby said that the objective of a recent trip to China by Kritenbrink and NSC’s senior director for China and Taiwan Affairs Sarah Beran, was to keep communication open between the two countries and pave the way for future visits, including at higher levels of government.
“And they felt that they had good useful, conversations with PRC officials about that and to that end, and I think you’ll see us speak to future visits here in the near future, but I just don’t want to get ahead of the schedule,” Kirby said.
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