Amid soaring tensions, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in China on 2-day visit
BEIJING
China’s top diplomat Qin Gang received his US counterpart Antony Blinken on Sunday in Beijing amid heightened tensions between the world’s two largest economies over issues ranging from Taiwan to the Russia-Ukraine war.
Blinken, who is the first Cabinet-level US representative to visit China since the inception of President Joe Biden’s administration in January 2021, is visiting Beijing from June 18 to 19, state-run Xinhua News reported.
With the strategic rivalry between the two sides heating up, Beijing severed military-to-military communication channels with Washington after then-House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan last August.
Blinken’s Beijing trip, which was agreed upon by Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping last November during a meeting in Indonesia, had been abruptly postponed in February after a suspected Chinese spy balloon was detected flying across the US.
