(Finance) – After speaking yesterday for seven and a half hours with his Chinese counterpart Qin Gang, today the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is in conversation with Wang Yi, director of the Central Foreign Affairs Bureau of Chinathe top rung of Chinese diplomacy.
The three-hour meeting between Blinken and Wang Yi was “candid and productive,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement. Several “bilateral and global” issues were addressed, and Blinken “stressed the importance of responsibly managing the competition between the United States and the People’s Republic of China through open channels of communication to ensure that competition does not escalate into conflict.”
It is not yet clear whether on his last day in Beijing Blinken will also see the President Xi Jinping. No meeting with the Chinese head of state was included in the schedule published by the US State Department, but the meeting seems likely especially after last week’s meeting between Xi and former Microsoft chief and philanthropist Bill Gates. In yesterday’s meeting between Blinken and Qin, Washington and Beijing have agreed to keep communication open in order to avoid any conflict. In the meeting with Wang Yi in addition to the thorny issue of ties between the United States and Taiwanan island claimed by Beijing and at the center of the confrontation between the two powers, bilateral relations remain tense on a large number of issues including trade and human rights.
“There is no room for compromise” on Taiwan, he said Wang to the US Secretary of State. The United States “must respect China’s sovereignty,” he added during the meeting which ended around noon and a half (Beijing time), according to the State Department, an hour later than scheduled . The Secretary of State’s afternoon is full of meetings of various kinds, even if all are closed to the press: meetings with students, with US embassy staff and local American entrepreneurs. Dmo
The United States must join the “One China” principle and clearly oppose “Taiwan independence,” Wang said as he urged the US to cease promoting “China threat theory,” reverse the illegal unilateral sanctions against China, abandon the struggle for Chinese technological development, and refrain from arbitrarily interfering in China’s internal affairs. China and the United States must also choose between “cooperation and conflict,” the senior Chinese diplomat said.
Wang called on the United States to “think deeply” and handle the differences with Beijing. According to Wang, the worsening of ties between the two countries is linked to Washington’s “wrong perception” of China. According to Chinese state broadcaster CCTV, Wang told the US secretary of state that his two-day visit to Beijing came at a “critical moment” in relations between the United States and China and that it was “necessary to make a choice between dialogue and confrontation, cooperation and conflict”. “With an attitude of responsibility towards people, history and the world, – Wang explained – we must reverse the downward spiral of Sino-US relations, push for a return to a healthy and stable track and work together to find a way correct for China and the United States to get along in the new era”.