BEIJING (AP) — The United States and China have pledged to stabilize their badly deteriorated ties during a critical visit to Beijing by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who met Monday with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Xi pronounced himself satisfied with progress made during talks in Beijing. But, Blinken told media China refused to resume military-to-military communications, a U.S. priority.
It remains to be seen whether the two countries can resolve their most important disagreements, many of which have international financial, security and stability implications.
The two sides expressed a willingness to hold more talks, but there was little indication that either is prepared to bend from its positions on issues including trade, Taiwan, human rights conditions and Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Blinken said later that the U.S. set limited objectives for the trip and achieved them. Blinken added that he had raised the issue of military to military communications “repeatedly.”
“It is absolutely vital that we have these kinds of communications,” he said. “This is something we’re going to keep working on.”
According to a transcript of the meeting with Blinken, Xi pronounced himself pleased with the outcome of Blinken’s earlier meetings with two top Chinese diplomats and said the two countries had agreed to resume a program of understandings that he and President Joe Biden agreed to at a meeting in Bali last year.
“The Chinese side has made our position clear, and the two sides have agreed to follow through the common understandings President Biden and I had reached in Bali,” Xi said.
That agenda had been thrown into jeopardy in recent months, notably after the U.S. shot down a Chinese surveillance balloon over its airspace in February, and amid escalated military activity in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea.
But Xi suggested the worst could be over.
“The two sides have also made progress and reached agreement on some specific issues,” Xi said without elaborating, according to a transcript of the remarks released by the State Department. “This is very good.”
“I hope that through this visit, Mr. Secretary, you will make more positive contributions to stabilizing China-U.S. relations,” Xi added.
In his remarks to Xi during the 35-minute session at the Great Hall of the People, which was not announced until an hour before it started, Blinken said “the United States and China have an obligation and responsibility to manage our relationship.”
Despite his presence in China, Blinken and other U.S. officials had played down the prospects for any significant breakthroughs on the most vexing issues facing the planet’s two largest economies.