US expects Blinken to host top Chinese diplomat Wang Yi by end of year

(Patria) - Washington expects US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to host Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in the United States before the end of the year, either at the UN General Assembly next week or after that, the State Department said on Monday, Reuters reported.

“I’ll let the Chinese government speak to whether or not Wang Yi will attend the UN General Assembly next week. But with that in mind, whether it is the UN General Assembly or after the UN General Assembly sometime before the end of the year, we still expect Secretary Blinken to host Foreign Minister Wang Yi here in the United States,” said State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller.

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that China plans to send Vice President Han Zheng to the UN General Assembly, instead of sending Wang Yi on a broader trip to the US as previously announced, citing people familiar with the matter.

The annual gathering of world leaders comes after US President Joe Biden on Sunday expressed disappointment that Chinese President Xi Jinping will not attend the upcoming G20 leaders’ summit in India, but added that he will “see him.”

Biden did not specify, but the next likely opportunity for Biden to hold talks with Xi, as the two countries seek to stabilize troubled relations, is the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in San Francisco in November.

China’s top security agency hinted that any meeting between Xi and Biden in San Francisco later this year would depend on the US “showing enough sincerity.”

“As the president said, he hopes to meet with President Xi later this fall. We believe there is no substitute for one-on-one talks at the leader level, so we will continue to work on the possibility of that happening,” Miller said.

Blinken was in Beijing in June, where he met with Wang’s predecessor Qin Gang in the first visit by a top US diplomat to China in five years. The US State Department said at the time they held “candid, substantive, and constructive” talks, and Blinken invited Qin to Washington to continue discussions.

Blinken subsequently met with Wang on the sidelines of a regional meeting in Jakarta in Qin’s absence.

Three other senior US officials traveled to China for meetings after Blinken’s visit, but Chinese officials have yet to travel to the United States for talks.
Wang (69), was foreign minister from 2013 to 2022, while ties with the US were strained to a point described by Beijing as an all-time low.