U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken speaks at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s annual policy summit in Washington, DC, June 5, 2023.
Chip Somode Villa | Getty Images
Secretary of State Anthony Blinken is expected to travel to China in the coming weeks for talks, two U.S. officials told NBC News on Tuesday.
The previously planned trip was delayed after a Chinese spy balloon was spotted flying over the United States.
U.S. officials did not provide further details on Blinken’s rescheduled trip, which was first reported by Bloomberg News.
Blinken delayed the trip in February and former U.S. officials said in April after a suspected spy balloon entered U.S. airspace and flew over the continental United States.
State Department spokesman Ned Price said Blinken told Chinese official Wang Yi at the time that the balloon was “an irresponsible act that clearly violated U.S. sovereignty and international law and undermined the purpose of the trip.”
China’s foreign ministry previously described the balloon as a “civilian airship” for meteorological research.
After the incident, relations between the two countries deteriorated sharply, with leaders postponing or rejecting talks. Just last week, China rejected a U.S. request for its defense ministers to meet at a security summit in Singapore. U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping previously met in Bali, Indonesia, in November, and they agreed that Blinken would visit China to follow up the discussions.
Tensions over Taiwan and the territory were among the topics discussed by the two leaders — issues that did not recede in the months that followed.
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Tuesday that Biden was “confident” the two countries would be able to “return to the spirit of Bali,” referring to the November meeting.
On Monday, the U.S. military released a video from last weekend showing a Chinese warship and a U.S. destroyer in the Taiwan Strait within 150 yards of each other, according to the U.S. military. A Chinese government representative defended its actions on Monday, saying “China always respects the right of navigation”.
The debate over Taiwan’s future is expected to be high on Blinken’s agenda when he visits Beijing. Taiwan is a self-governing island that Beijing claims but never controls.
Last fall, Biden said in a speech at the United Nations General Assembly that the United States opposed “unilateral changes to the status quo” in the Taiwan Strait, but Xi Jinping refused to rule out the possibility of taking the island by force.
After the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979, the US generally refused to say whether it would defend Taiwan from Chinese invasion, a policy known as “strategic ambiguity”. The bill requires the United States to provide Taiwan with defensive weapons and makes clear that Washington established diplomatic relations with Beijing in the hope that Taiwan’s future will be determined peacefully.
However, Biden has repeatedly said that the United States will defend Taiwan if China invades. In September, a spokesman for China’s foreign ministry said his remarks “violated the important commitment made by the United States not to support Taiwan’s independence,” even as Biden administration officials insisted that U.S. policy had not changed.
Other points of contention between the U.S. and China continue to sour their relationship: In October, the Biden administration restricted sales of key semiconductors to China, a move China’s foreign minister called a “bullying tactic.” Blinken, who has been sharply critical of China’s crackdown on civil liberties in Hong Kong and Tibet, also said China’s systematic detention of the Uighur minority constituted “genocide and a crime against humanity.”
Blinken’s upcoming visit may also be aimed at assuaging security concerns among key U.S. allies in the Indo-Pacific region, such as South Korea and Japan.
“The status quo of Sino-U.S. relations is a powder keg, and I fear it could explode at any moment,” South Korean Rep. Lee Jae-joong, a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the South Korean National Assembly, said in March.
Aspects of U.S.-China relations have proven to be rare points of bipartisan agreement in Congress. Last month, the bipartisan House Select Committee on China adopted policy recommendations on potential conflict in Taiwan and the abuse of Uighurs.
Last August, then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi met with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen during a visit to the self-governing island, prompting a sharp reaction from China, which conducted military exercises that experts said simulated an attack on the island . A bipartisan delegation visited Taiwan shortly after House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) met Tsai in April in California.