Blinken to visit China to try to improve communication

US Secretary of State will also visit UK

The suspected Chinese spy balloon in the sky over Billings, Montana, in February. AFP

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will travel to Beijing this week in a bid to improve communication with China, the State Department said on Wednesday, months after a trip was cancelled when the US downed what it called a Chinese spy balloon.

Mr Blinken will also travel to London to attend a Ukraine conference on the June 16-21 trip.

In Beijing, Mr Blinken will meet senior officials to “discuss the importance of maintaining open lines of communication to responsibly manage the US-[China] relationship”, the State Department said.

China is Washington's top trading partner but also its main competitor on the international stage, and Beijing is expanding its influence from the Indo-Pacific to the Middle East and beyond.

“We expect China to be around and to be a major player on the world stage for the rest of our lives,” said Kurt Campbell, Deputy Assistant to the President and Co-ordinator for Indo-Pacific Affairs.

Washington also expects China to continue taking “provocative steps” in the Taiwan Straits, something Mr Campbell said the US would resist.

Washington said it is committed to improving diplomatic channels.

“We will seek to manage the competition,” said Mr Campbell. “And work together where our interests align from a position of confidence in ourselves and in the importance of clear and high level communication with other great powers.”

Mr Blinken will be the most senior US official to visit China since President Joe Biden took office.

He will have a long list of issues he hopes to bring up with his Chinese counterpart and other high-ranking officials during his visit, said Bonnie Glaser, director of the Asia programme at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

“The challenge is really to just get beyond the talking points that both sides come prepared to deliver and really try to make progress on some of these issues,” Ms Glaser told The National.

She says trust between the two powers has “evaporated” in recent years.

The visit, which was agreed between Mr Xi and Mr Biden last year at a meeting in Bali, had been initially planned for February but was postponed after the spy balloon incident in which the US shot down a Chinese aircraft that Beijing insisted was a weather balloon that had strayed off course.

Since then, there have been rare contacts between the US and China due to escalating tensions caused by China's conduct in the South China Sea, its actions towards Taiwan, and its perceived support for Russia following the invasion of Ukraine.

At a congressional hearing on Wednesday, Democratic Congressman Greg Meeks said the US needs to convince other countries that it offers a "credible alternative" to partnerships with Beijing.

"The United States does not want to force countries to choose between China and the United States. But we must make clear that they have a choice," he told the Foreign Affairs Committee.

US officials said the trip was not about deliverables but about establishing “communication channels that are open and empowered to discuss important challenges".

Washington expects Mr Blinken's trip to be the first of a “series of visits” by both US and Chinese officials.