WASHINGTON (AP) — Secretary of State Antony Blinken plans to travel to China next week as the Biden administration pushes to improve relations that soured in February after a Chinese surveillance balloon was shot down in US airspace.
US officials said Blinken is expected to be in Beijing on June 18 for meetings 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 has confirmed the trip.
The visit, which Xi and President Joe Biden agreed to 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 astray.
Since then, there have been ties between the US and China, but they have been rare as tensions have risen over China’s behavior in the South China Sea, aggressive actions toward Taiwan and support for Russia’s war against in 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 an ongoing effort to maintain open lines of communication and responsibly manage competition. The two sides agreed to maintain this important strategic channel of communication to advance the goals this.”
Recently, the top US diplomat for the Asia-Pacific region, Daniel Kritenbrink, traveled to China earlier this week with a senior National Security Council official.
