WASHINGTON — Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi will meet with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan during a visit to Washington this week, senior administration officials said, paving the way for President Joe Biden’s potential first meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in a year.
Wang’s visit from Thursday to Saturday is expected to focus largely on discussing a possible Biden-Xi meeting during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco next month. The two leaders last met on the sidelines of a summit of the Group of 20 economies in Bali, Indonesia, in November and have not spoken since.
The Biden administration has not announced a meeting between Biden and Wang, but senior administration officials described the visit as “reciprocal” to Blinken’s visit to Beijing in June, when he met with Xi.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry also confirmed the dates of Wang’s visit on Tuesday.
The visit also comes as the Biden administration’s focus is on the Middle East and the threat of escalation in the Israel-Hamas war through Iranian proxies in the region. Beijing’s close relations with Tehran prompted Blinken to call Wang this month and ask China to use its influence to prevent the conflict from widening. A State Department readout of the call said Blinken discussed “maintaining stability in the region and discouraging other parties from entering the conflict.”
Relations between the world’s two largest economies have fallen to what Beijing says is their lowest point since diplomatic relations were established in 1979 over a variety of issues, including trade, technology, human rights, the status of Taiwan and China’s stance on the war in Ukraine. They were further thrown into crisis when an alleged Chinese spy balloon was shot down over U.S. territory in February, leading Blinken to postpone a planned visit to Beijing.
Over the summer the Biden administration, which says it seeks “competition, not conflict,” with China, sent a series of senior officials to Beijing to improve relations, including Blinken, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, U.S. climate envoy John Kerry and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo. Last month, Sullivan, the national security adviser, had two days of discussions with Wang in Malta.
A bipartisan group of U.S. senators visited Beijing independently this month and met with Xi for over an hour.
The lack of reciprocal visits by Chinese officials had drawn criticism from Republicans and others who want the Biden administration to take a harder line with Beijing.
