BEIJING—During preparations for Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visit, China’s leadership has had two audiences other than the United States in mind.
According to a senior state department official, Blinken and Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang had seven-and-a-half hours of direct discussions and a dinner meeting on Sunday, during which they agreed to work together to increase the number of flights between the United States and China.
Yet prior to Blinken’s arrival in Beijing on Sunday morning, the first visit by a cabinet-level official from the United States since 2019, Chinese officials, state media, and academics emphasised that the United States has been the most anxious to meet.
Beijing, however, has had its own motivations for detente with the United States: Beijing’s top priority this year, according to Chinese officials, is to pave the way for top leader Xi Jinping to attend the November summit of Asia-Pacific leaders in San Francisco, and possibly a separate meeting with President Biden.
Chinese diplomats have worked to ensure the Chinese leader receives a respectful welcome on his first journey to the United States since 2017.
The Chinese leadership’s need to explain to a domestic audience why it appears to be shifting to re-engage with the U.S. after giving Washington the cold shoulder for months and blaming the U.S. for the deteriorating bilateral relationship drove the terse messaging preceding Blinken’s visit.
Blinken was welcomed to Beijing by the U.S. ambassador to China, Nicholas Burns, and the director-general of the Chinese Foreign Ministry in charge of U.S. relations.
On Sunday, Blinken and Qin participated in a large meeting, a smaller session, and a dinner that senior State Department officials described as direct and productive because the officials avoided recent “distrust” and sought cooperation in a variety of areas. Blinken and Qin reached an agreement that the Chinese foreign minister would visit the United States.
As with previous visits by U.S. secretaries of state, Blinken is anticipated to confer with Xi during this trip. Washington and Beijing have not yet confirmed the prospective meeting between Blinken and Xi. He is also expected to meet with American healthcare, automotive, and entertainment industry executives.
U.S. allies in Europe and Asia are another important audience for Chinese leaders, as Beijing intensifies efforts to prevent other countries with advanced technology from joining Washington in sanctioning Chinese companies.
As competition between the U.S. and China intensifies, particularly over advanced technology, the Biden administration has attempted to convince the Netherlands, Japan, and South Korea to limit semiconductor exports to China alongside the U.S. Washington has also been working to limit China’s investments in sensitive technologies, an effort it believes will receive support from its European and Asian allies.
However, not everybody is on board. Some U.S. allies, motivated by their own economic interests in the world’s second-largest economy, have pushed back against increasing restrictions on doing business in China and grown concerned about the deteriorating U.S.-China relationship. The concerns of the allies have created an opening for Beijing to attempt to place distance between these countries and the United States.
“The Chinese anticipate further U.S. technology sanctions,” said David Dollar, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a former World Bank representative in Beijing. Dollar is also a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “Part of China’s willingness to meet with Blinken and reopen lines of communication is to demonstrate to Europe and other American allies that it is willing to cooperate and halt the downward spiral,”
This, according to Dollar, could “reinforce European reluctance to fully align with the United States in the tech competition with China.”
During his trip to Beijing, Blinken spoke with his counterparts from Japan and South Korea as part of an effort to collaborate with U.S. regional allies on China, according to a senior State Department official.
To stabilise the relationship, both Beijing and Washington sought to initiate dialogue on geopolitical, economic, and other issues at the start of this year. Then, a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon crossed North America before the United States shot it down at the beginning of February, sending relations back into a spiral of decline.
The incident with the balloon prompted Blinken to postpone a visit to China that was intended to be the beginning of a series of high-level exchanges.
Since then, tensions between the two countries have continued to escalate.
Wang Yi, the top Chinese foreign-affairs official, travelled to Munich in mid-February for a high-profile security conference. According to people who have consulted with Chinese authorities, Beijing was infuriated by what it perceived to be an attempt by Washington to sabotage Beijing’s efforts to repair its relations with Europe.
Blinken stated at the Munich conference that U.S. intelligence indicated China was contemplating sending weapons to Russia to aid its war in Ukraine, just as Wang was attempting to reassure Europeans of Beijing’s desire for peace. According to sources familiar with the matter, a meeting between Blinken and Wang on the margins of the conference did not go well, with the secretary of state criticising Beijing over its support for Russia during the Ukraine conflict and the surveillance balloon.
Since then, China has repeatedly rejected U.S. requests for high-level discussions and blamed Washington for all issues between the two countries.
Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin stated during a press conference on Friday in Brussels that he had not contacted his Chinese counterpart since they clasped hands but did not meet at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore earlier this month. The U.S. secretary of defence stated that he is willing to resume communications between the two military leaders.
“The door is open. “My phone line is available,” said Austin. Countries with significant military capacity and capabilities should have the ability to communicate with one another so that we can manage potential crises and prevent things from spiralling out of control unnecessarily.
In the face of a worsening economic downturn in China, Beijing has shown greater interest in senior economic officials engaging in dialogue with their American counterparts. Last month, Xi dispatched his minister of commerce to Washington for a dinner meeting with Gina Raimondo, his U.S. counterpart. This was the first cabinet-level encounter between the two countries during the Biden administration. As part of the U.S. endeavour to maintain high-level communications, both Raimondo and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen have expressed a desire to visit China.
Since the balloon incident, Beijing has had to explain to the Chinese public why senior leaders are pivoting to welcoming the secretary of state after dragging their feet on rescheduling Blinken’s visit. To this end, it has attempted to portray the United States as the willing party.
Qin urged the U.S. to respect “China’s core concerns,” such as its sovereignty claims to Taiwan, and to “stop interfering in China’s internal affairs, and stop harming China’s sovereignty, security, and development interests in the name of competition.”
Former national security adviser on China and Asia for the Obama administration, Ryan Hass, predicted that the Chinese media would continue to be “uncharitable” towards Blinken before and after his visit.
“It will be a challenge for Secretary Blinken and his team to tune out the noise and concentrate on the message the Chinese are communicating behind closed doors,” Hass said.
