Blinken heads to China this weekend on mission to salvage sinking ties and keep communications open

WASHINGTON — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will travel to China this weekend as part of the Biden administration’s push to repair deteriorating ties between Washington and Beijing and keep lines of communication open, the State Department said Wednesday. That is the only way to clear up misperceptions, to signal, to communicate, and to work together where and when our interests align.” In its readout of the Blinken-Qin phone call, China’s foreign ministry said Qin urged the United States to respect “China’s core concerns” such as the issue of Taiwan’s self-rule, “stop interfering in China’s internal affairs, and stop harming China’s sovereignty, security and development interests in the name of competition.” Qin noted China-U.S. ties “have encountered new difficulties and challenges” since the beginning of the year, and the two sides’ responsibility is to work together to properly manage differences, promote exchanges and cooperation and stabilize relations, it said. More recently, the top U.S. diplomat for the Asia-Pacific region, Daniel Kritenbrink, traveled to China last week along with a senior National Security Council official to finalize details of Blinken’s trip. Blinken said on Monday that when Biden took office in January 2021, U.S. intelligence agencies briefed him “on a number of sensitive efforts by Beijing around the world to expand their overseas logistics, foreign collections infrastructure to allow them to project and sustain military power at a greater distance.” Although the Chinese had already upgraded their facilities in Cuba in 2019, Blinken said Biden determined that more needed to be done because Trump administration officials “weren’t making enough progress on this issue and we needed a more direct approach.” He did not elaborate on what had been done since, although the Biden administration has moved rapidly to expand its diplomatic presence, especially in Indian Ocean and the Pacific island nations, where it has opened or has plans to open at least five new embassies over the next year or so.