Chinese President Xi Jinping will meet US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Beijing on Monday. The meeting will take place this morning, at 9:30 am, reveals an official US source, quoted by the AFP agency.
The head of US diplomacy ends a two-day visit to Beijing on Monday, which aims to ease the growing tensions between the US and China.
Last Sunday, Blinken met with Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang, becoming the highest-ranking US official to visit China since Biden took office in 2021.
On Saturday, Antony Blinken explained that his visit to Beijing is aimed at “opening direct lines of communication” so that the two countries can “manage the relationship responsibly (…) and avoid miscalculations.”
The US Secretary of State’s visit was initially scheduled for February, but was postponed at the last minute due to the incident with the Chinese balloon flying over US territory.
Beijing claimed that it was a weather device that had gone off course, but Washington acted as if it were an espionage maneuver.
Now, Antony Blinken downplays the case: “I don’t think the leaders [chineses] I knew where the balloon was, what it contained and what was happening (…) I think it was more shameful than intentional,” he said before the meeting with Qin Gang.
Source: TSF
