US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday met with Chinese President Xi Jinping who said that an agreement on “some specific issues” has been reached during the extensive talks between the top diplomats of the two countries amidst tense ties. Blinken met Xi on the last day of his two-day high-stakes visit to Beijing during which the Chinese president spoke of the agreement without providing any details.
Xi said that China’s top diplomat and Director of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi and Foreign Minister Qin Gang described their talks with Blinken as candid and in-depth. The Chinese side has made its position clear, and the two sides have agreed to “follow through with the common understanding US President Joe Biden and I had reached in Bali,” state-run CGTN quoted President Xi as saying.
The intense competition requires sustained diplomacy to ensure that competition does not veer into confrontation or conflict, he said. Blinken is expected to establish a road map and timetable with the Chinese side on senior bilateral exchanges during the trip, Shanghai-based news site The Paper quoted Wu Xinbo, head of US studies at Fudan University, as saying.
Qin Feng, an academic committee member of Peking University’s Institute for Global Cooperation and Understanding, said Blinken’s visit was part of the preparation for President Xi’s trip to the United States in November, where he is expected to meet President Biden on the sidelines of the APEC summit.
In a way, the materialization of Blinken’s Beijing trip is a success by itself. It marks progress in the preparation for the two nations’ leaders’ summit, which was delayed by the balloon incident. There is lots of catching up to do at the working level now, Qin Feng said.
On June 16, President Xi met Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Bill Gates. “I believe that the foundation of Sino-US relations lies in the people. 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,” he said after his meeting with Gates.
Biden told White House reporters Saturday he was hoping that over the next several months, he will meet with Xi again and talk about legitimate differences the two countries have and how to get along.
Chances for such a meeting may come at a Group of 20 leaders’ gathering in September in New Delhi and at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in November in San Francisco that the United States is hosting.
