The US Secretary of State met Xi Jinping on the last day of his visit to China. It was the first stay in the Asian country in nearly five years for a head of American diplomacy.
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Calm between the two countries. Chinese Presidents Xi Jinping and US President Joe Biden hailed progress in relations between their countries on Monday (June 19) following a visit to Beijing by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Antony Blinken met Xi Jinping on the second and last day of his visit to China. It was the first stay in the Asian country in nearly five years for a head of American diplomacy.
“Both sides have made progress and reached common ground on some specific points”welcomed Xi Jinping without specifying the latter, qualifying the progress of “very good thing”according to public television CCTV. “We are on the right path”said Joe Biden during a trip to California.
Many disagreements persist
Both sides, however, played down the prospects of any major reconciliation. According to the American Secretary of State, who said to himself “lucid”, the more than eleven hours of discussions he conducted in two days were mainly aimed at restoring dialogue. Another encouraging sign: the Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs, Qin Gang, has accepted an invitation to visit the United States, on a date yet to be determined.
But Antony Blinken acknowledged that progress was limited for the time being, in particular on the restoration of communication between the two armies. Bilateral relations remain tense on many issues: Taiwan, rivalry in technology, trade, the treatment of the Muslim Uyghur minority in China or Chinese claims in the South China Sea.
On Monday morning, the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) top diplomat, Wang Yi, told Antony Blinken that the United States now had to choose “between dialogue and confrontation, cooperation and conflict”according to CCTV.