(Washington) US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will meet this week with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on the sidelines of a conference in Bali, the State Department said on Tuesday.
Posted at 9:02
The two officials, who last saw each other in October, will discuss on the sidelines of a G20 ministerial meeting amid high tensions over a range of issues, including Taiwan.
The talks will also come as US President Joe Biden prepares for an upcoming exchange with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, who has not traveled abroad since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Mr. Blinken will also meet with his Indonesian counterpart, among others, and then travel to Thailand on Saturday.
Meetings between the United States and China, once common, had come to a near halt during the pandemic and as tensions grew between the world’s two largest economies.
Mr. Blinken and Mr. Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, had met in March 2021 in Alaska with their Chinese counterparts during a meeting which had turned into an unprecedented unpacking of their deep disagreements.
Besides trade, China and the United States are particularly at loggerheads over the fate of Taiwan.
Washington and Beijing also diverge radically on the response to the war in Ukraine: if the Americans have taken the lead in the Western response against Russia, the Chinese insist on the contrary on their proximity to the regime of Vladimir Putin.
China, for example, has dramatically increased its purchases of Russian oil.
The rivalry with the Asian giant is Joe Biden’s stated strategic priority, which seeks to counter Beijing’s ambitions in Asia and the Pacific, and more broadly in the world.