US diplomacy and President Joe Biden himself breathed a breath of relief this Monday. Xi Jinping, the leader of China, granted Antony Blinken an audience in Beijing.
It was no easy task, Washington sources said. It almost didn't happen, which would have been a severe blow to the attempt to de-escalate the two global superpowers.
In the agenda for this Monday that the State Department released, there was no allusion to that possible meeting and it was only confirmed three quarters of an hour before the appointment. That Blinken had flown to London for a summit on the Ukraine boded badly.
The 35-minute talk made it possible to build bridges at a time when allusions to a cold war are repeated, with recent friction in the South China Sea and the repeated ones in the Taiwan Strait, and was interpreted as a gesture of goodwill for that “the competition does not deviate into a confrontation”.
The host received his guest with a "this is very good" in reference to his visit. He received him at the Great Hall of the People, a huge building on the west side of Tiananmen Square, where Xi regularly entertains foreign dignitaries.
"The world needs a more stable relationship between us," Xi said, according to an official note, in which he described the conversation as frank.
"The interaction must follow the common understanding and must be based on mutual respect and sincerity," he said. "I hope that with this visit, Mr. Secretary, you will make a more positive contribution to stabilizing relations," the Chinese leader remarked.
"The two sides have already made progress and reached agreements on specific issues, and this is very good," Xi added, without elaborating. “The world needs a stable relationship between us,” she insisted.
The head of US diplomacy responded that Biden asked him to travel to Beijing "because he believes that the United States and China have an obligation to maintain a responsible relationship." For Blinken, his country "is committed to doing this in the interest of my country, China and the world." The US Administration had “low expectations” in terms of achievement. “This is a relationship that was at a point of instability and needed to be stabilized,” Blinken explained as a priority.
It was about stopping the spiral in free fall of relations between the two nations. So the objective of Blinken, the first senior official to make this trip in five years - in 2018 Mike Pompeo was there - was to reestablish a communication channel between the two capitals to avoid misunderstandings and miscalculations that lead to a situation of gravity and laments. However, as the Secretary of State acknowledged at a press conference, both parties left their most pressing problems unresolved.
China has refused to resume military-to-military communications, a key issue on its roadmap, for now.
"China has refused to go ahead with this and it is an issue that we have to continue working on because it is very important to restore these channels," replied Blinken, who spent more than five hours talking with Chinese Foreign Minister Qin on Sunday. gang.
“It is an imperative issue. It is absolutely vital that this communication exists, underscored by recent incidents that we saw in the air and on the seas,” he noted. "If we agree that we have a responsibility in the way we manage our relationships, if it is in our common benefit that this does not lead to conflict, then we must agree and agree that these channels that we both consider necessary must include the communications between the military,” Blinken said.
"There is no immediate progress -he concluded-, but it is a priority for us".
