The top U.S. diplomat is finally heading to Beijing after months of delays and cancellations—but recent events could make for some awkward meetings.
These unsafe interactions raise the risk that one or both sides will make dangerous miscalculations, Biden administration officials say. One of the Pentagon’s primary concerns right now is about working to “strengthen the guardrails against conflict” with China in the coming days, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said this week.
One of Blinken’s top goals for his meetings in Beijing is to reestablish communication channels with the Chinese to prevent miscalculation from growing into conflict, senior Biden administration officials said. Despite the growing tensions, the Biden administration recognizes that it’s necessary to run the traps on diplomacy even when disagreements crop up, Jacob Stokes, a former national security aide to Biden and former acting special adviser to the vice president for Asia policy, told The Daily Beast.
Although Blinken’s trip has been hanging in the balance for months, diplomacy hasn’t dried up entirely. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan met with the Director of the Office of the Central Commission for Foreign Affairs, Wang Yi, in May. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai met with China’s Minister of Commerce. Kritenbrink met last week with Vice Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu in Beijing.
“China’s not really in the mood or prepared at all to offer any types of concessions,” Grossman told The Daily Beast. “What to do about the status of Taiwan? What to do about China’s expansive claims over the South China Sea, threatening its neighbors throughout the Indo-Pacific, human rights violations? There’s no real kind of negotiating out of those things.
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