U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will make a three-day visit to China next week to hold talks with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi and other senior officials, in the latest effort to control tensions even as the major powers continue to spar on many issues.
During the visit from Wednesday, Blinken will express "deep concerns" over China's support for Russia's defense industrial base, while other high-priority issues will include the importance of stability around Taiwan ahead of next month's inauguration of the self-ruled island's President-elect Lai Ching-te, a senior State Department official said.
Blinken's upcoming trip to Shanghai and Beijing follows President Joe Biden's phone conversation in early April with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen's visit to China, also this month, and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin's first talks with his Chinese counterpart since 2022 in a virtual meeting this week.
"We are in a different place than we were a year ago, when the bilateral relationship was at a historic low point," the official said. "We've set out to stabilize the bilateral relationship without sacrificing our capacity to strengthen our alliances, compete vigorously and defend our interests."
The official said Blinken has three primary objectives -- making progress on ongoing cooperation in areas such as counternarcotics, directly conveying concerns about bilateral, regional and global issues, and making clear that the United States intends to responsibly manage its competition with China.
But the official, who previewed the upcoming visit on condition of anonymity, signaled that it will be particularly important to raise the issue of China transferring to Russia various goods and weapons components that Moscow has used to advance its military production.
"The concern there is that through Chinese support, Russia has largely reconstituted its defense industrial base, which has an impact not just on the battlefield in Ukraine but poses a larger threat, we believe, to broader European security."
Other key issues to be discussed include the crisis in the Middle East, China's "provocations" in the South China Sea, and North Korea's "threatening rhetoric and reckless actions," according to the official.
The latest in a series of increased high-level interactions between Washington and Beijing is based on an agreement between the presidents of the two countries at a mid-November summit near San Francisco.
Biden and Xi agreed at the time that their teams would follow up on their discussions with high-level diplomacy, working-level talks in key areas and visits in both directions.
Despite numerous points of contention, they have agreed to responsibly manage their rivalry, avoid conflict and cooperate on areas of shared interest.
In addition to gradually resuming military-to-military communications, senior U.S. and Chinese officials have started dealing with issues such as curbing the spread of fentanyl and promoting safety in the use of artificial intelligence.
Blinken previously visited Beijing in June last year, becoming the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit China since the start of the Biden administration in January 2021.
