US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing.
The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices.
However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year.
Photo: Reuters
At the time, he was the highest-ranking US official to visit China in five years and the trip was followed by a meeting between the countries’ presidents in November.
At that summit in California, Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) agreed to a US wish list including restoring contact between militaries and cracking down on precursor chemicals to fentanyl, the painkiller behind an addiction epidemic in the US.
Blinken arrived in Shanghai, where he started his visit by attending a Chinese basketball playoff match between two teams with American players on their rosters.
The friendly side trip — the first visit by a US secretary of state to the bustling metropolis since Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2010 — would have been unthinkable until recently, with hawks on both sides previously speaking of a new Cold War between the two powers.
A senior US official previewing Blinken’s trip said that the US and China were at a “different place than we were a year ago, when the bilateral relationship was at an historic low point.”
“We also believe, and we have also clearly demonstrated, that responsibly managing competition does not mean we will pull back from measures to protect US national interests,” he said.
The eagerness of the administration of US President Joe Biden to engage China stands in stark contrast to its efforts to isolate Russia since its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
After initially being pleased that Beijing has not directly supplied weapons to Russia, the US has accused China in the past few weeks of lavishing industrial material and technology on Moscow.
Washington has encouraged European leaders, including German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who recently visited Beijing, to stand firm on China not backing Russia, believing that it wants stable ties with the West as it focuses on addressing economic headwinds at home.
“If China purports on the one hand to want good relations with Europe and other countries, it can’t on the other hand be fueling what is the biggest threat to European security since the end of the Cold War,” Blinken said on Friday last week after G7 talks in Capri, Italy.
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