Blinken, whose Beijing trip was postponed due to the Chinese spy balloon incident in early January, finally met with Chinese President Xi Jinping after having a five-hour meeting with Foreign Minister Qin Gang on Sunday and another meeting with top diplomat Wang Yi on Monday.
Both the Chinese and US sides described the Qin-Blinken talks as candid, in-depth and constructive.
China said the two countries will push forward top-level official dialogues, including Qin's and Wang's coming visits to the US, and also work-level communications. They said both nations will increase the number of direct flights between them and encourage humanities, educational and academic exchanges between their people.
During their meeting, Wang told Blinken that the US must stop hyping“the China threat theory,” cancel unilateral sanctions against China, give up suppressing China's technological development and stop interfering in China's internal affairs.
An article pulished by the state-owned Defense Times said all the four demands made by Wang were rejected by Blinken.
Chinese academics and commentators said that, as it's unlikely that the US will ease its stance on technology ban and Taiwan matters within the short run, the only way to
reboot the
Sino-US relations is through unofficial exchanges.
At the end of his trip, Blinken told the media that both sides agreed to set up a working group to address the issue related to China's export of fentanyl precursor chemicals to the US. He also said he believes China can play a role to alleviate the risk of global food shortage by helping push forward a long-term Black Sea grain agreement.
He added that he had told his Chinese counterparts that what the US means by“de-risking” is hugely different from“de-coupling.”
He said the US has no intention to decouple from China as many American firms still want to do business with the country but the US government will continue to prevent its technologies from being used against the American people – for example, in making hypersonic weapons or in human rights abuses.
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He said both sides discussed the Ukraine war. He said Washington did not see any evidence that China has sent lethal weapons to Russia but he has urged Beijing officials to stay vigilant that some Chinese private companies are selling their products to Russia for military use.
He reiterated that the US does not support Taiwan independence but will make sure that the island can protect itself. He said more US officials will visit China in the coming weeks.
Five 'noes'
Last September, US President Joe Biden told Xi that the US will not seek a new Cold War with Beijing nor change the Chinese political system nor ask any nation to choose between the US and China nor support Taiwan independence nor seek conflict with the Chinese.
Beijing later called these“five noes .” It said Biden reiterated that the US would follow the“five noes” principle during his face-to-face meeting with Xi in Bali last November.
However, Beijing expressed serious discontent as Washington kept sanctioning Chinese companies, selling arms to Taiwan and persuading its allies to impose export bans against China. The Sino-US tensions grew further after a Chinese spy balloon was seen in American airspace in late January and US House Speaker and Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen met in California in April.
“The Chinese side has made our position clear, and the two sides have agreed to follow through the common understandings President Biden and I had reached in Bali,” Xi said in his opening speech when meeting with Blinken on Monday.“The two sides have also made progress and reached agreements on some specific issues. This is very good.”
“State-to-state interactions should always be based on mutual respect and sincerity. I hope that through this visit, you will make more positive contributions to stabilising China-US relations,” Xi said.
He said major-country competition does not represent the trend of the times, still less can it solve America's own problems or the challenges facing the world. He said China respects US interests and does not seek to challenge or displace the US but at the same time hopes that the US respects China and not to hurt China's legitimate rights and interests.
He said China always hopes to see a sound and steady China-US relationship and believes that the two major countries can overcome various difficulties and find the right way to get along based on mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation. He also called on the US side to adopt a rational and pragmatic attitude and work with China in the same direction.
Prior to this, China's Foreign Ministry has said that Biden over-reacted in the Chinese balloon incident as he ordered the shootdown of the balloon. Just before Blinken's China trip, Biden said the incident“was more embarrassing than it was intentional.”
“China has some legitimate difficulties unrelated to the US, and I think one of the things that balloon caused was not so much that it got shot down, but I don't think the leadership knew where it was, knew what it was in it, and what was going on,” he said Saturday.
“I'm hoping over the next several months, I'll be meeting with Xi again and talking about legitimate differences we have but also how there are areas we can get along,” he said.
Taiwan matters
During their meeting in Beijing on Sunday, Qin told Blinken that the Taiwan question is the core of China's core interests, the most consequential issue and the most pronounced risk in the China-US relationship. He said the US should abide by the one-China principle and the three China-US joint communiqués, and truly deliver on its commitment of not supporting Taiwan independence.
According to a statement published by Beijing after the meeting, China and the US agreed
to keep moving forward consultations on the guiding principles of their relations. Both sides agreed to continue advancing consultations through the joint working group to address specific issues in the relations.
In fact, Biden and Xi had already discussed these two topics in Bali last November.
Sun Chenghao, an associate researcher at the Center for International Security and Strategy (CISS) at
Tsinghua
University, said in an article at that time that the US and China had maintained a stable relationship for several decades after they announced the Three Joint Communiqués between 1972 and 1982. Sun said the two countries can consider drafting the fourth ones to clearly define long term Sino-US relations.
“These two agreements only mean that the both sides will continue to meet and talk,” a Zhejiang-based columnist writes in an article posted Monday.“China definitely knows how serious the Taiwan matters are, but it's unclear whether the US really understands them.”
He says the most concrete achievements in the Qin-Blinken meeting is that both sides agreed to encourage more people-to-people and educational exchanges. He says it is easier to boost unofficial exchanges and the number of flights than to resolve political problems.
“As the US side has repeatedly failed to meet its promises, it is unclear how conflicts between the US and China can still be resolved by official dialogues,” Yuan Zhou, a military and political columnist, writes in an article .“The agreement about encouraging unofficial exchanges can be a way out.”
Yuan says top executives of Tesla, JP Morgan and Microsoft have recently visited China, showing that there is a strong foundation to rebuild Sino-US relations and reduce political conflicts.
Chen Feng, a columnist at Guancha.cn, says US firms such as Boeing, Nvidia, Ford and Tesla cannot afford to leave the huge Chinese markets.
He predicts that with in view of all their investments, European countries will not join the US to sanction China and then
the US will fail to maintain a strong alliance with Australia, Japan and the United Kingdom. He says this
is
a good way for China to
break the United States' technology blockage.
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Follow Jeff Pao on Twitter at
@jeffpao3
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