US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday started two days of high-stakes diplomatic talks in Beijing aimed at trying to cool exploding US-China tensions that have set many around the world on edge.
Blinken opened his program by meeting Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Qin Gang (秦剛) for an extended discussion to be followed by a working dinner.
He is to have additional talks with Qin, as well as Chinese Central Foreign Affairs Commission Director Wang Yi (王毅) and possibly Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) today.
Photo: AFP
Neither Blinken nor Qin made any substantive comments to reporters as they began the meeting at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse.
Despite Blinken’s presence in the Chinese capital, prospects for any significant breakthroughs are slim, as animosity and recriminations have steadily escalated over a series of disagreements that have implications for global security and stability.
Blinken is the highest-level US official to visit China since US President Joe Biden took office and the first secretary of state to make the trip in five years.
Biden and Xi agreed to Blinken’s trip early at a meeting last year in Bali, Indonesia. It came within a day of happening in February, but was delayed by the diplomatic and political tumult brought on by the discovery of what the US says was a Chinese spy balloon flying across the US that was shot down.
Biden on Saturday played down the balloon episode as Blinken was heading to China.
“I don’t think the leadership knew where it was and knew what was in it and knew what was going on,” he told reporters.
“I think it was more embarrassing than it was intentional,” he added.
Biden said he hoped to again meet Xi after their lengthy and strikingly cordial meeting in Bali.
“I’m hoping that, over the next several months, I’ll be meeting with Xi again and talking about legitimate differences we have, but also how there’s areas we can get along,” Biden said.
The list of disagreements and potential conflict points is long, ranging from trade with Taiwan, human rights conditions in China and Hong Kong, to Chinese military assertiveness in the South China Sea and Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Xi offered a hint of a possible willingness to reduce tensions, saying in a meeting with Microsoft Corp cofounder Bill Gates on Friday that the US and China can cooperate to “benefit our two countries.”
“I believe that the foundation of Sino-US relations lies in the people,” Xi told Gates. “Under the current world situation, we can carry out various activities that benefit our two countries, the people of our countries, and the entire human race.”
Additional reporting by AFP
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
WHAT WAS ALL THAT FOR? Jaw Shaw-kong said that Cheng Li-wen had pushed for more drastic cuts and attacked him, just for the outcome to be nearly identical to his bill The legislature yesterday passed a supplementary budget bill to fund the purchase of separate packages of US military equipment, with the combined amount of spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.8 billion). The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their legislative majority to pass the bill, which runs until 2033 and has two main funding provisions. One was for NT$300 billion of arms sales already approved by the US for Taiwan on Dec. 17 last year, the other was for NT$480 billion for another arms package expected to be announced by Washington. The bill, which fell short of the NT$1.25
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
RSS