US, Chinese officials hold constructive talks in Beijing

Senior Chinese and US officials have held talks in Beijing aimed at managing their increasingly fraught relationship, with both sides characterizing the meeting as productive despite lingering concerns over escalating tensions.

The State Department said the visit to China on June 5 by the top US diplomat for Asia, Daniel Kritenbrink, for talks with Chinese officials, including Vice Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu, saw the two sides engage in “candid and productive discussions as part of ongoing efforts to maintain open lines of communication and build on recent high-level diplomacy between the two countries,” Japan Times reports

The diplomats exchanged views on the bilateral relationship, Taiwan-related issues and other matters, the State Department said, adding that US officials “made clear that the United States would compete vigorously and stand up for US interests and values.”

China’s Foreign Ministry said the “frank and constructive” talks had focused on “promoting an improvement in Sino-US relations,” adding that the officials had discussed “properly managing differences in accordance with the consensus reached by” US President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping last November during their meeting in Bali, Indonesia.

“Both parties agreed to continue communication,” the ministry said.

Although China’s rebuffing of a US request for the rivals’ defence chiefs to meet over the weekend — as well as two close encounters between the countries’ militaries — had threatened to overshadow a spate of high-level interactions between the two sides in recent weeks, the visit of June 5 could help lay the foundation for a Biden-Xi telephone call as well as a rescheduling of a scuttled visit to Beijing by Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

Sino-US ties plummeted to a fresh low in February, after the US shot down an alleged Chinese spy balloon that flew over the United States, prompting Washington to cancel Blinken’s highly anticipated trip.

White House national security spokesman John Kirby told a news conference that the US officials had on June 5 also expressed concern about recent “unsafe and unprofessional” intercepts by the Chinese military.

Last week, the U.S. released video footage showing a Chinese fighter jet flying in front of a US military surveillance plane in international airspace over the flash point South China Sea, which it described as an “unnecessarily aggressive manoeuvre.” Over the weekend, the Pentagon released video showing an “unsafe” Chinese move in the Taiwan Strait, in which a Chinese navy ship cut sharply in front of a US destroyer, forcing the American ship to slow to avoid a collision.

US officials have in recent months warned of the rising possibility of an accident in the South China Sea or Taiwan Strait that could threaten to erupt into conflict, saying the close encounters highlight the need for communication.

“Particularly when times are tense, particularly when there’s a risk of miscalculation … that’s the time that you want to be able to have a conversation,” Kirby said, adding that the visit by US officials was in “keeping with our larger, longer efforts to keep the lines of communication with [China] open, and we’ll see where this goes after that.”

Diplomacy has appeared to be getting back on track. Last month, CIA Director William Burns made a secret visit to Beijing, while Chinese Commerce Minister Wang Wentao met US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and Trade Representative Katherine Tai in Washington. US national security adviser Jake Sullivan also held two days of talks with senior Chinese diplomat Wang Yi in Vienna.

Kirby called Monday’s talks “a good sign,” but demurred when asked if other high-level trips were in the works.

“Without predicting what the next visit is going to be or by whom or when: Yes, we are feeling like we are making progress in terms of opening up additional lines of communication,” he told a news conference.

His remarks follow comments by Sullivan on Sunday that Biden and Xi would meet “at some point” as the two seek to “put a floor under the relationship.”