Chinese President Xi Jinping was very friendly with his US visitor. He welcomed him calling him “old friend” and opened his arms to him, smiling.
“In the current world situation, we can do various beneficial activities for our countries and our people, activities that favor humanity as a whole”, said the president.
The head of United States diplomacy, Antony Blinken, became this Sunday the first Secretary of State to visit Beijing in five years. But at this moment the oven is not for donuts and all these congratulations Xi did not offer to Blinken in his welcome. He dedicated these words on Friday to Bill Gates, entrepreneur and philanthropist. As they say, business is business.
In fact, the first day of thawing in the relations between the two world giants, with Taiwan as the peak point of ignition, concluded without clearing the doubt: Xi will receive Blinken this Monday, on his second and last day visiting? The local authorities said that “possibly”.
The answer to this question was what was most expected from this journey. It is also true that relations between the two nations are worse than in 2018, when Mike Pompeo had his face-to-face with Xi. After leaving the government, Pompeo assured that the Chinese president was “the most unpleasant” of the leaders with whom he had relations during his term. He described him as “a communist par excellence of the apparatus who always wanted to impose his vision”.
Blinken set foot in Beijing at last, in the midst of rarely strained relations, and with a delay of several months. In February I was about to board the plane when the flight was delayed. A Chinese spy balloon had been spotted crossing US skies and the visit was called off.
In reality, State Department advisers acknowledged that expectations were low now that the agenda has resumed. The big aspiration was that if Washington made a phone call, Beijing would hang up.
President Joe Biden on Saturday acknowledged “legitimate differences” with China, although he noted that there are areas “where we can get along.”
“We hope this meeting can help bring relations between the two countries back to the path the two presidents agreed on in Bali,” tweeted Hua Chunying, assistant to Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang. Chuying alluded to the meeting between Biden and Xi in November on the sidelines of the G-20 meeting and which allowed the spiral of tension to be mitigated. The tibantor was reproduced, however, after the balloon incident. The Pentagon shot him down and Beijing considered this response to have been an overreaction.
Then it became known that the Chinese had been electronically spying on the USA since 2019, using a base in Cuba.
Blinken emphasized this Sunday with Qin, in an appointment that lasted more than five hours, the need to keep the lines of communication open on a wide range of issues to avoid “misperception and miscalculation”, according to Matthew Miller, State Department spokesman. The two in charge of foreign affairs held a “frank, substantive and productive” meeting.
“The secretary raised a number of issues of concern, as well as opportunities to explore cooperation on shared transnational issues with China that align with our interests,” he said. Blinken invited Qi to continue the talk in Washington.
These future meetings include not only the visits of Janet Yellen (Secretary of the Treasury) and Gina Raimondo (Secretary of Commerce), but above all the option for Xi to go to San Francisco in November for the meeting of Asian leaders – Peaceful, and see you with Biden.
Qin greeted Blinken and his entourage at the gate of a villa on the grounds of the guest house and not inside the ministry building. The host welcomed him speaking in English. He asked how the flight went. The minister told the Secretary of State, based on official media, that China is committed to building a “stable, predictable and constructive” relationship with the United States. But Qin pointed out that Taiwan “is the most prominent risk” there. Chinese official sources noted that, in addition to this conflict, “economic cooperation, the conflict between Russia and Ukraine and the preparation of the next high-level meetings” were some of the main topics of the meeting.
Beijing has its sights set on the trade war opened by the US, especially for microchips, in which Washington is trying to slow down the semiconductor industry after the bottleneck in supplies caused by the closure decreed during the pandemic.
The Biden Administration wants to fight Western dependence. The Americans also raised the issue of human rights, the detention of compatriots in this territory and the fentanyl crisis, due to the shipment from China of chemical substances to South America, where this opiate that causes havoc is produced to the north
