Chinese President Xi Jinping said on Monday that he expected “a positive outcome” from his meeting in Beijing with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, with improved relations between the two countries.
“I hope that with this visit, Secretary of State Blinken will bring a positive result for the stabilization of relations between China and the United States,” Xi Jinping was quoted as saying by China’s English-language public television CGTN, at the beginning of the meeting. . with the American leader in Beijing.
Xi Jinping told the US Secretary of State that interactions between states “should always be based on mutual respect and sincerity.”
The Chinese president also said that a consensus had been reached with Washington, according to Chinese media.
“The two sides have made progress and reached consensus on some specific points,” Xi Jinping said, calling this progress “a good thing.”
The meeting on Monday between Xi and Blinken, which was not part of the official agenda and was confirmed at the last minute, occurs on the second and last day of the US Secretary of State’s visit to China.
According to the Associated Press (AP) news agency, Blinken’s visit is expected to kick off a new round of visits by senior US and Chinese officials, possibly including a meeting between Xi and US President Joe Biden in the next months.
Today, Blinken had already met with senior Chinese officials, namely China’s top diplomat Wang Yi, in a meeting that lasted nearly three hours.
Wang Yi told the US Secretary of State on Thursday that China and the US have to choose between “cooperation or conflict,” according to state media.
“It is necessary to choose between dialogue and confrontation, cooperation and conflict,” he stressed, according to Chinese state television CCTV.
Wang Yi also said the country “will not make any concessions” regarding Taiwan, an island that Beijing claims as its territory and which has sparked growing tension between the two countries.
“Maintaining national unity is always at the core of China’s core interests” and “on this issue, China will neither compromise nor compromise,” Wang Yi told Antony Blinken, in the first visit by a US secretary of state since 2018.
Wang, the top diplomatic official of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), urged the United States to respect China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and oppose Taiwan’s independence.
In the first round of talks on Sunday, Blinken met for nearly six hours with Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang after the two countries said they agreed to continue high-level dialogue.
The two sides said Qin accepted an invitation from Blinken to visit Washington, but Beijing made it clear that “the relationship between China and the United States is at the lowest point since it was established.”
According to AP, this sentiment is widely shared by US authorities.
In addition to the Taiwan issue, other issues have contributed to strained relations between the world’s two largest economies.
These include technological rivalry, US sanctions against Chinese digital giants, trade, China’s treatment of the Uyghur Muslim minority and Beijing’s claims to the South China Sea.
Source: TSF
