U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Chinese President Xi Jinping met in Beijing on Monday as they sought to thaw tensions. Photo courtesy Chinese Foreign Ministry/Twitter
June 19 (UPI) — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken topped off a two-day visit to China on Monday with a meeting with President Xi Jinping, the first high-level contact between the two superpowers since November.
Xi hailed the summit saying the two sides had reached agreement on some specific issues which he said was “very good.”
“The Chinese side has made our position clear and the two sides have agreed to follow through on the common understanding that President [Joe] Biden and I had reached in Bali,” Xi said.
The pair met on the sidelines of a meeting of the G20 in Bali in November and agreed to take concrete steps to repair the relationship including a visit to Beijing by Blinken, the first by a U.S. secretary of state in five years.
Xi also called on Blinken to do more to improve relations.
“I hope that, through this visit, you will make more positive contributions to stabilizing China-U.S. relations,” he said.
The meeting, which was confirmed at the last minute by officials from both the U.S. State Department and China’s Foreign Ministry, followed a three-hour meeting Monday morning with the country’s top foreign affairs adviser, Wang Yi, and seven-and-a-half-hours of “candid, substantive” talks on Sunday between Blinken and his Chinese counterpart, Qin Gang.
State television confirmed the meeting was underway in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.
The Blinken-Xi head-to-head comes with U.S.-China relations at a low point following spats over Taiwan, China’s expansionist ambitions in the South China Sea and the shooting down of a Chinese spy balloon over the United States and is not expected to produce any fresh agreements.
Emerging from his meeting with Blinken earlier, Wang blamed the United States’ “wrong perception” of his country for the poor state of relations between Washington and Beijing.
Wang also said that Taiwan represented a “core” interest for China and that Beijing has “no room” to compromise its stance.
Blinken’s trip to Beijing came at a “critical juncture in China-U.S. relations, and it is necessary to make a choice between dialogue or confrontation, cooperation or conflict,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.
“We must reverse the downward spiral of China-U.S. relations, promote a return to a healthy and stable track and jointly find the right way for China and the United States to co-exist in the new era,” Wang said.