Top US diplomat Antony Blinken looks forward to meeting China’s Wang Yi to build on ‘important conversations’
- Invitation formally extended to Beijing’s newly renamed foreign minister as an autumn date is targeted, says American secretary of state
- Blinken alludes to recent cabinet-level discussions US has carried out amid efforts to stabilise bilateral ties
America’s top diplomat on Thursday expressed a wish to meet his newly reappointed Chinese counterpart Wang Yi in the US in the coming months to build on the “important conversations” he had with senior Chinese officials in Beijing in June.
“We are looking at the fall,” said Blinken of a possible meeting. “We don’t have a response yet, but we just extended that invitation”.
“I would expect we’ll have an opportunity to see each other and to continue the important conversations that I had in Beijing, that a number of my colleagues in the cabinet had.”
“We certainly expect that it is something that they would accept and is a trip that we expect to happen, but we have not yet scheduled a date,” Miller said at the time.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen was the next Biden administration official to visit Beijing, where she took part in hours-long meetings with China’s premier, Li Qiang, as well as a vice-premier.
Yellen was followed in Beijing by Biden’s climate envoy, John Kerry, who met his Chinese counterpart, Xie Zhenhua.
After a four-day trip that included closed-door talks, Kerry spoke of having “productive discussions”. And though no breakthrough on climate cooperation was achieved, the two sides agreed to hold regular meetings.