WASHINGTON (AP) — Secretary of State Antony Blinken plans to travel to China next week as the Biden administration pushes to improve ties that hit a new low in February after a surveillance balloon Chinese missile was shot down over American airspace.
U.S. officials say Blinken expects to be in Beijing on June 18 to meet with senior Chinese officials, including Foreign Minister Qin Gang and possibly President Xi Jinping.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because neither the State Department nor the Chinese foreign ministry have yet confirmed the trip.
The visit, which was agreed between Xi and President Joe Biden last year at a meeting in Bali, was initially planned for February but was postponed after the spy balloon incident. Beijing insists the craft was a weather balloon that went off course.
Since then, there have been contacts between the United States and China, but they have been infrequent as tensions have risen over China’s conduct in the South China Sea, aggressive actions toward Taiwan, and the support for Russia’s war against Ukraine.
Last week, China’s defense minister rejected a request from US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin for a meeting on the sidelines of a security symposium in Singapore.
However, shortly after postponing his trip to Beijing, Blinken met briefly with China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, at the Munich Security Conference in Germany.
And, CIA chief William Burns traveled to China in May and China’s commerce minister traveled to the US last month. And Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, met with Wang in Vienna in early May.
The White House said at the time that the meeting “was part of ongoing efforts to keep lines of communication open and manage competition responsibly. Both sides agreed to maintain this important strategic channel of communication to advance those goals.”
Most recently, the top US diplomat for the Asia-Pacific region, Daniel Kritenbrink, traveled to China earlier this week along with a senior National Security Council official.
