US Secretary of State managed to meet with the President of China in Beijing

On the second day of his visit to Beijing, on June 19, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken held a 35-minute meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. This reception, according to the Associated Press, symbolizes the success of Blinken’s trip to China – the first such visit since 2018. At the same time, the very fact of meeting with the Chinese leader remained in doubt until the last moment – the State Department published a message that the conversation would still take place. hour before the start of negotiations.

Xi praised the outcome of the meeting with the US Secretary of State. “The two sides have made progress and reached agreement on some specific issues. It’s very good,” CNN quoted the Chinese leader as saying. China’s state broadcaster CCTV reported that Xi stressed an agreement he had reached with Blinken to “follow the general consensus that President Biden and I reached in the Bali talks.” We are talking about the summit of Xi and US President Joe Biden in Indonesia in 2022. As a result of that meeting, the parties agreed not to conflict with each other, to comply with the agreements on Taiwan (i.e., the United States must adhere to the “one China” policy, which they committed to date back to the late 1970s) and maintain peace in the South China Sea, as well as reestablish bilateral contacts temporarily cut off after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taipei in 2022.

Expectations from both sides of the talks were very low, and the United States failed to achieve the desired result as a result of them. As CNN reported on June 18, citing a senior State Department official, Blinken’s main goal was to negotiate the resumption of contacts between the US military and China. Later, the Associated Press reported that the parties agreed to continue negotiations in the future, but China this time refused to resume military contacts.

On June 18, Blinken held talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang, and on June 19 he met with his boss, Wang Yi, head of the Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. Following the meeting, the Chinese side issued a press release. It reported that in negotiations with Blinken, Wang Yi conveyed to him the importance of a decisive moment in US-China relations, “when it is necessary to make a choice between dialogue or confrontation, cooperation or conflict.” According to the Chinese representative, the current priority is the stabilization of US-China relations and the full implementation of the Bali agreements. In addition, Wang Yi urged the US to stop inflating the “China threat theory”, lift its illegal unilateral sanctions against China, and stop suppressing China’s technological development. Blinken, in turn, reaffirmed Washington’s commitment to the Bali consensus and expressed hope for a settlement of differences with Beijing.

According to the original plan, Blinken was supposed to arrive in China in February 2023, but this was prevented by the incident with the Chinese balloon. The United States considered a Chinese balloon that flew into their territory a reconnaissance vehicle and shot it down. This led to a diplomatic conflict with China, which condemned Washington’s actions against an allegedly civilian object that accidentally entered US territory.

Now there are no prospects for improving US-China relations, since the United States does not show a desire to abandon its policy of containing China, says Alexander Lomanov, head of the Center for Asia-Pacific Studies at IMEMO RAS. Despite the correct words spoken by Blinken in Beijing, Washington continues unfriendly actions towards China, including military-political support for Taiwan, military-technical strangulation of China, and exclusion of its access to Western markets and technologies. In addition, Beijing is not satisfied with US security actions, which boil down to the creation of anti-Chinese blocs in Asia, pressure in the field of scientific and technological cooperation, as well as US claims to primacy in the Pacific region. Nevertheless, Beijing still hopes for a correction in the political course of the United States, which themselves understand the importance of building relations with China. According to Lomanov, we must give credit to both sides: both Washington and Beijing are making active efforts to slow down the degradation of relations. Even in the absence of prospects, work is underway to strengthen contacts, and if the parties manage to at least stop the process of degradation for the foreseeable future, this will be a major diplomatic success, Lomanov concludes.

It is really not necessary to expect an improvement in relations between the United States and China, Lev Sokolshchik, a researcher at the Center for Comprehensive European and International Studies at the National Research University Higher School of Economics, agrees. The confrontation between Beijing and Washington has a systemic character and therefore will be long-term and multi-level. It will affect the economy, politics, and technological progress. The United States, the expert recalls, officially calls China a “strategic rival”, which is recorded in the current security strategy. Several important regional issues remain unresolved, the most acute of which is the problem of Taiwan receiving weapons from the United States. Despite the fact that following the results of the Bali summit, the United States declared its adherence to the “one China” principle, Washington’s serious support for Taiwan continues. Thus, Sokolshchik concludes, Blinken’s visit is more of a tactical move, designed to make the confrontation manageable.