U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met yesterday with Chinese President Xi Jinping and said they agreed to “stabilize” deteriorated U.S.-China ties, but America’s top diplomat left Beijing with his biggest ask rebuffed: better communications between their militaries.
After meeting Xi, Blinken said China is not ready to resume military-to-military contacts.
Yet Blinken and Xi pronounced themselves satisfied with progress made during the two days of talks, without pointing to specific areas of agreement beyond a mutual decision to return to a broad agenda for cooperation and competition endorsed last year year by Xi and President Joe Biden at a summit in Bali.
And, it remained unclear if those understandings can resolve their most important disagreements, many of which have international implications. Still, both men said they were pleased with the outcome of the highest-
level U.S. visit to China in five years.
Blinken said later that the U.S. set limited objectives for the trip and achieved them. He told reporters before leaving for a Ukraine reconstruction conference in London that he had raised the issue of military to military communications “repeatedly.”
“It is absolutely vital that we have these kinds of communications,” he said. “This is something we’re going to keep working on.”
The U.S. has said that, since 2021, China has declined or failed to respond to over a dozen requests from the Department of Defense for top-level dialogues.
According to a transcript of the meeting with Blinken, Xi said he was pleased with the outcome of Blinken’s earlier meetings with top Chinese diplomats and said restarting the Bali agenda were of great importance.
“The Chinese side has made our position clear, and the two sides have agreed to follow through the common understandings President Biden and I had reached in Bali,” Xi said.
“The two sides have also made progress and reached agreement on some specific issues,” Xi said without elaborating, according to a transcript of the remarks released by the State Department. “This is very good.”
In his remarks to Xi during the 35-minute session at the Great Hall of the People, a meeting that was expected but not announced until an hour before it started, Blinken said “the United States and China have an obligation and responsibility to manage our relationship.”
“The United States is committed to doing that,” Blinken said. “It’s in the interest of the United States, in the interests of China, and in the interest of the world.”
Blinken described his earlier discussions with senior Chinese officials as “candid and constructive.”
Despite the symbolism of his presence in China, Blinken and other U.S. officials had played down the prospects for any significant breakthroughs on the most vexing issues facing the planet’s two largest economies.
Instead, these officials have emphasized the importance of the two countries establishing and maintaining better lines of communication.
Thus, China’s refusal to resume the military-to-military contacts was a hitch.
“Progress is hard,” Blinken told reporters. “It takes time, it takes more than one visit.”
Blinken’s trip is expected to herald a new round of visits by senior U.S. and Chinese officials to each other’s countries, possibly including a meeting between Xi and Biden in India or the U.S in the coming months.
Blinken meets top diplomat Wang Yi
Before meeting with Xi, Blinken met earlier with China’s top diplomat Wang Yi for about three hours.
Wang, also a member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, noted that Blinken’s visit comes at a critical juncture in China-U.S. relations, and a choice needs to be made between dialogue and confrontation as well as between cooperation and conflict.
History always moves forward, and China-U.S. relations will also move on. “Reversing the wheels of history will lead nowhere, and overturning what has been achieved is even less desirable,” Wang said.
We need to shoulder our responsibilities to the people, history and the world, avert the downward spiral of the relationship, bring it back to the track of sound and steady development, and jointly explore the right way for China and the United States to get along with each other in the new era,” he said.
Noting that relations between China and the United States are at a low point, Wang underscored that the root cause is U.S. misperceptions toward China, which have led to misguided China policies.
China-U.S. relations have gone through ups and downs, and it is necessary for the United States to reflect upon itself, and work with China to jointly manage differences and avoid strategic surprises, Wang said.
He pointed out that in order to stabilize China-U.S. relations, the most urgent task is to act on the common understandings reached between the two presidents with real actions.
He also urged the U.S. side not to project onto China the assumption that a strong country is bound to seek hegemony and not to misjudge China with the beaten path of traditional Western powers. “This is key to whether the United States can truly return to an objective and rational policy toward China.”
Wang demanded that the United States stop playing up the so-called “China threat”, lift illegal unilateral sanctions against China, stop suppressing China’s scientific and technological advances, and do not wantonly interfere in China’s internal affairs.
He stressed that safeguarding national unity has always been the core of China’s core interests. It is where the future of the Chinese nation lies and the abiding historical mission of the CPC.
On the Taiwan question, China has no room for compromise or concession, Wang said.
He said the United States must earnestly abide by the one-China principle set out in the three China-U.S. joint communiques, respect China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and unequivocally oppose “Taiwan independence.”
Blinken said that the U.S. side is committed to going back to the agenda set by the two presidents during their summit in Bali and looks forward to enhancing communication with China, managing differences responsibly and cooperating in areas of common interests. MDT/AGENCIES
