The secretary of state, Antony J. Blinken, met in Indonesia with his Chinese counterpart, part of a diplomatic flurry as Washington seeks to cool tensions with Beijing.
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Foreign Minister Wang Yi of China, left, and Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken on the Indonesian resort island of Bali on Saturday.
NUSA DUA, Indonesia — Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken met with the Chinese foreign minister on Saturday, pressing him to “stand up” against Russia’s war in Ukraine while also extending a hand of cooperation amid a Biden administration campaign to stabilize its strained relationship with Beijing.
The meeting, held on the Indonesian resort island of Bali one day after a summit of Group of 20 foreign ministers, followed months of American warnings to China against sending weapons to Russia or helping Moscow evade Western sanctions imposed in response to the invasion of Ukraine.
Mr. Blinken met the foreign minister, Wang Yi, at a seaside resort hotel for more than five hours, the latest in a series of high-level American encounters with top Chinese officials that analysts called a mutual effort at easing tensions between the countries.
Speaking to reporters afterward, Mr. Blinken dismissed China’s claims to be neutral in the war between Russia and Ukraine as implausible. He said that China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, had continued to stand by his declaration in February of a partnership with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, that China had supported Russia at the United Nations and that it had “amplified Russian propaganda.”
Mr. Blinken also pointed out that Beijing and Moscow had held a joint strategic bomber exercise in May.
“I tried to convey to the state councilor that this really is a moment where we all have to stand up” to condemn Russian aggression, Mr. Blinken said, using Mr. Wang’s formal title.
“What you hear from Beijing is that it claims to be neutral. I would start with the proposition that it’s pretty hard to be neutral when it comes to this aggression,” Mr. Blinken added. “There’s a clear aggressor. There’s a clear victim.”
ImageA charred housing block in Hostomel, Ukraine, on Thursday. Mr. Blinken said he had told Mr. Wang that “this really is a moment where we all have to stand up” to condemn Russian aggression.Credit…Emile Ducke for The New York Times
Mr. Blinken also echoed recent remarks by numerous American officials as he emphasized the importance of cooperation between Beijing and Washington on issues of shared interest, including climate change and global health.
“The relationship between the United States and China is highly consequential for our countries, but also for the world,” Mr. Blinken said.
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After several months of being consumed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Biden administration officials have been focusing anew on China, which they call the top long-term strategic threat to the United States.
Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, met last month in Europe with Yang Jiechi, another senior Chinese diplomat; and Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III saw his Chinese counterpart a few days later in Singapore. This month, Janet L. Yellen, the Treasury secretary, held a videoconference with a Chinese vice premier, Liu He. And the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark A. Milley, spoke by phone last week with his counterpart, Li Zuocheng.
Danny Russel, a former senior State Department official who is a vice president at the Asia Society, a policy institute, said the big question now was whether President Biden and Mr. Xi would have their first in-person meeting, most likely on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit scheduled for November in Indonesia.
“Both sides seem to think that leveraging the personal relationship between Biden and Xi would go a long way to stabilizing the relationship at a time of turbulence for both the U.S. and China,” Mr. Russel said. “There are no guarantees that these efforts will succeed, and neither side is likely to be public about their plans, but it certainly feels as if there is a convergence around the idea of a face-to-face meeting.”
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Linda Jakobson, deputy chair and founding director of China Matters, an independent think tank in Australia, said that both the United States and China had reasons to improve their relationship. One of those, she said, was the global economy, which not only threatens Mr. Biden’s Democratic Party in the midterm elections in November, but also Mr. Xi’s bid for a third term as president at the Chinese Communist Party’s congress this fall.
Both sides are also hoping to avoid a miscalculation over Taiwan, which China considers a breakaway territory. The island has become a major point of tension amid increasing Chinese military activity and vows by Mr. Biden to defend it against any aggression by Beijing. Those promises by the American president raised questions about whether he was changing longstanding U.S. policy.
ImageWarplanes at an air base in Taiwan. The island has become a major point of tension between Beijing and Washington.Credit…Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times
“It’s in the interests of both Washington and Beijing to now find a way to ease tensions,” Ms. Jakobson said.
“But of course,” she added, “neither side wants to look weak or budge on any issue of substance, and that’s why we’re having a flurry of mixed signals.”
The Chinese Foreign Ministry said on Saturday, in its readout of the meeting, that Mr. Wang had urged the United States to refrain from attacking China’s political system, from recycling Cold War-era strategies of containment and from “sausage cutting” on the Taiwan issue.
He also called on Washington to remove tariffs on Chinese products and to stop imposing sanctions on Chinese companies.
“Many people thus believe that the United States suffers from a growing ‘China phobia,’” Mr. Wang said, according to the readout. “If this ‘expanding threat’ concept is allowed to keep growing, the United States’ China policy will soon become an inescapable dead end.”
Ms. Jakobson said it was likely that Mr. Biden and Mr. Xi would meet at the summit in November. While it would be their first in-person meeting since Mr. Biden became president, the two spent long hours together during the Obama administration, when Mr. Biden was vice president and Mr. Xi a senior party official.
“I think there’s a good chance that the two will decide to meet,” she said. “They’ve already shown that they believe in intensive dialogue, even if it doesn’t lead to concrete results. And it at least doesn’t set back the relationship.”
Chinese news outlets largely shared the view of Western analysts that the two sides were looking for better communication and even cooperation.
The nationalist Chinese newspaper Global Times, often a font of bellicose commentary about the United States, published a temperate analysis before the meeting, saying that the recent diplomatic contacts reflected a “consensus for avoiding escalating tension.” But it also said that Washington should “take more concrete actions, rather than just lip service, to reduce twists and turns impacting bilateral relations.”
Less than three weeks before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in late February, Mr. Putin and Mr. Xi appeared together at the Beijing Olympics and released a joint statement celebrating their strengthening ties and criticizing NATO for adopting a Cold War-style mentality of confrontation.
“U.S.-China meetings now are mostly performance art consisting of set-piece presentations and rebuttals by the two sides,” Mr. Russel, the Asia Society analyst, said.
At the meeting of Group of 20 foreign ministers on Friday, the United States and its allies focused on the war in Ukraine and the disruptions it had caused to global food and energy supplies. Western officials blamed Moscow for the meeting’s failure to produce a joint communiqué, noting that the Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov — with whom many of the ministers refused to interact — had left the event before its conclusion.
But Chinese state media portrayed the West as the problem, saying that the fixation on Russia distracted from possible cooperation on matters such as global food shortages and skyrocketing energy prices.
Mr. Blinken said on Saturday he hoped that Mr. Lavrov had heard pleas from Group of 20 members for Moscow to stop blockading the export of grain from Ukrainian ports. “Let’s see if Russia got the message,” Mr. Blinken said.
Amy Qin contributed reporting from Taipei, Taiwan.
Source: nytimes.com
