Chinese President Xi Jinping hailed Monday during a meeting with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken the “progress” and “common ground” between Beijing and Washington, despite the tensions.
This interview comes on the second and last day of Mr. Blinken’s visit to China, a first in nearly five years for a head of American diplomacy.
In addition to the very thorny question of the links between the United States and Taiwan, an island claimed by Beijing and at the heart of the disputes between the two powers, bilateral relations remain tense on a large number of issues.
Among them, the rivalry in technologies, the American sanctions targeting the Chinese digital giants, the trade, the treatment of the Muslim minority of the Uighurs in China or even the Chinese claims in the South China Sea.
After a meeting in the morning with Wang Yi, the highest official of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for diplomacy, Antony Blinken was received Monday afternoon by Xi Jinping at the monumental People’s Palace in Beijing.
“The two sides have made progress (this Monday morning) and reached common ground on some specific points”, unspecified, underlined Xi Jinping, qualifying these advances as “very good thing”, according to a video broadcast by public television CCTV.
“I hope that through this visit, Secretary of State Blinken will bring a positive result to stabilizing China-US relations,” Xi told his interlocutor.
Taiwan
Monday morning, Wang Yi told Antony Blinken that Beijing and Washington, having reached a “critical moment” in their relations, had to choose “between dialogue and confrontation, cooperation and conflict”, according to CCTV.
The Chinese official, who has the upper hand in China on Chinese foreign policy, also strongly reaffirmed his country’s position on the Taiwan issue.
China considers Taiwan to be one of its provinces, which it has yet to successfully reunify with the rest of its territory since the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949.
“Maintaining national unity is always at the heart of China’s fundamental interests” and “on this issue, China will not make any compromises or concessions,” Wang Yi told Antony Blinken.
Beijing says it is opposed to what it perceives as a continuous rapprochement in recent years between Washington and the Taiwanese authorities, from a pro-independence party.
The American official had been received on Sunday by the Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs, Qin Gang, who in the Chinese hierarchy is a notch below Wang Yi.
The two men had spoken for seven and a half hours, more than expected, the two countries agreeing to maintain communication between them in order to avoid any conflict.
“Like lovers”
In the streets of Beijing, a resident, Sun Yi, said she hoped that the visit of the American Secretary of State would calm relations.
“I think the two countries are like quarreling lovers,” the 26-year-old told AFP. “Both parties each have their own personality and interests and are not ready to compromise,” she said.
The two countries announced on Sunday that Qin Gang had accepted an invitation from the US Secretary of State to visit the United States, on a date yet to be determined.
The exchanges between the two men, concluded in the evening by a banquet, were “frank, substantial and constructive”, declared the spokesman of the State Department, Matthew Miller.
Mr. Blinken notably underlined “the importance of diplomacy and of maintaining open channels of communication on all issues in order to reduce the risk of misperception and miscalculation”, he specified.
The Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs had deplored to his American counterpart that Beijing-Washington ties are “at their lowest” since the establishment of diplomatic relations in 1979, according to Chinese diplomacy.
Antony Blinken’s visit is the first by a US secretary of state to China since his predecessor Mike Pompeo’s October 2018 trip.