American Secretary of State Antony Blinken is trying to boost relations with Chinese partners - thediplomaticaffairs.com

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General Affairs Politics July 14, 2023

American Secretary of State Antony Blinken is trying to boost relations with Chinese partners

Photo: Reuters

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken held “frank and constructive” talks with China’s top diplomat Wang Yi on Thursday in a new Sino-US meeting that Washington says is aimed at managing competition between the two rival superpowers, reports Reuters. The meeting took place in Jakarta, where Wang is representing China at a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations after Beijing said Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang could not make the trip for health reasons. Wang and Blinken sat opposite each other in the hotel room in the center of the Indonesian capital and did not make statements to the media. The talks were “sincere and constructive” and referred to both differences and potential cooperation, as the carrier summarized in a statement from State Department Matthew Miller.

The head of US diplomacy also emphasised the importance of “maintaining peace and stability” in the Taiwan Strait, he added. Wang, who is the foreign policy chief of the Chinese Communist Party, ranks higher than Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang, who is the government’s foreign policy chief, Reuters explains. According to Xinhua, the senior Chinese diplomat said on Thursday that the US must take concrete measures to bring Sino-US relations back to normal and called on the US side to adopt a rational and pragmatic attitude, recalling that the two sides reached a consensus through in-depth and frank communication during the US Secretary of State’s visit to China last month. Blinken met with Qin and Wang in Beijing last month, the first visit to China by a secretary of state in five years. Earlier in July, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen visited China, with the climate envoy of the USA, John Kerry, expected in the Asian country next week. On Wednesday, China’s ambassador to the US held a rare meeting at the Pentagon with a senior US defence official in charge of Asia, all of which analysts say are part of efforts to prepare for a summit that could take place later in 2023 between US President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping, but tensions remain high, Reuters notes. A senior US official quoted by AFP on condition of anonymity indicated that the US Secretary of State warned the top Chinese diplomat on Thursday that Washington would hold accountable those “responsible” for a computer attack allegedly of Chinese origin that targeted, according to Microsoft, the websites of several federal agencies. Another American official mentioned that Blinken emphasised on the same occasion the importance of “keeping communication channels open, including between the armies.” “We have not yet succeeded in doing this,” admitted the official cited by AFP. The head of US diplomacy also discussed the means of combating the chemical precursors of fentanyl, a synthetic opioid at the origin of an “epidemic” of drug addiction in the United States. Although China has banned exports of fentanyl to the US since 2019, chemical compounds needed to manufacture the drug continue to be exported from China to Mexico and Central America before entering US territory.

By Roberto Casseli

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