Diplomatic communications with China remain open after the US shot down a Chinese spy balloon this month, but contact between the countries’ militaries “unfortunately” remains shut down, the White House said on Friday.
US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said it was not the “right time” for US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to travel to China after he postponed a trip planned for earlier this month over the balloon episode, but US President Joe Biden wanted to speak to Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) when it was “appropriate.”
Kirby told a White House news briefing that US and Chinese diplomats can still communicate despite tensions over the balloon incident.
Photo: AFP
“I recognize that there are tensions, but Secretary Blinken still has an open line of communication with the [Chinese] foreign minister. We still have an embassy in Beijing ... and the state department also can communicate directly with the PRC embassy personnel here,” he said, referring to the People’s Republic of China.
“Unfortunately, the military lines aren’t open, and that’s really what we would like to see amended,” he said.
China cut several military-to-military communication channels and other areas of bilateral dialogue after a visit to Taiwan by then-US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi in August last year, which took US-China relations to a dangerous low.
On Thursday, Biden gave a speech focusing on the balloon incident.
He said he expected to speak with Xi about it and hoped to get to the bottom of the affair.
Kirby said Washington had not formally requested a call with Xi, but added: “That does mean it’s not going to happen, that the president ... doesn’t want to talk to President Xi. He will.”
“There’s no preconditions for a call,” Kirby said. “The president will want to have a conversation with President Xi at the appropriate time.”
White House officials said Biden and Xi last spoke in November last year at a summit in Indonesia, and that the two countries saw Blinken’s planned trip to Beijing as an opportunity for follow-up efforts to stabilize increasingly fraught ties.
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