Chinese President Xi Jinping said on Monday he expects “a positive outcome” from his meeting in Beijing with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, with improvements in relations between the two countries.
“I hope that with this visit, Secretary of State Blinken will bring a positive result for the stabilisation of relations between China and the United States,” Xi Jinping was quoted by China’s English-language public television CGTN as saying at the start of his meeting with the US leader in Beijing.
Xi Jinping told the US secretary of state that interactions between states “should always be based on mutual respect and sincerity.”
The Chinese president also said that a consensus has been found with Washington, according to Chinese media.
“The two sides have made progress and reached consensus on some specific points,” Xi Jinping said, calling this progress “a good thing.”
Monday’s meeting between Xi and Blinken, which was not on the official agenda and was confirmed at the last minute, comes on the second and final day of the US secretary of state’s visit to China.
According to the Associated Press (AP) news agency, Blinken’s visit is expected to kick off a new round of visits by senior US and Chinese officials, possibly including a meeting between Xi and US President Joe Biden in the coming months.
Today, Blinken had already met with senior Chinese officials, notably China’s top diplomat Wang Yi, in a meeting that lasted nearly three hours.
Wang Yi told the US secretary of state today that China and the United States have to choose between “cooperation or conflict”, according to state media.
“A choice must be made between dialogue and confrontation, cooperation and conflict,” he stressed, according to Chinese state television CCTV.
Wang Yi also said the country will make “no compromise” on Taiwan, an island that Beijing claims as its territory and which has caused growing tension between the two countries.
“Maintaining national unity is always at the core of China’s fundamental interests,” and “on this issue, China will make no compromises or concessions,” Wang Yi told Antony Blinken, in the first visit by a US secretary of state since 2018.
Wang, the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) top diplomatic official, called for the United States to respect China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and to oppose Taiwan’s independence.
In the first round of talks on Sunday, Blinken met for nearly six hours with China’s Foreign Minister Qin Gang after the two countries said they agreed to continue high-level dialogue.
Both sides said Qin accepted an invitation from Blinken to visit Washington, but Beijing has made it clear that “the relationship between China and the US is at the lowest point since it was established”.
According to AP, this sentiment is widely shared by US officials.
In addition to the Taiwan issue, other issues have contributed to the strained relations between the world’s two largest economies.
These include technology rivalry, US sanctions against Chinese digital giants, trade, the treatment of the Uighur Muslim minority in the Asian country and Beijing’s claims to the South China Sea.
