“Sometimes US-China relations have to get dangerously bad before the two governments can put more effort into improving the relationship,” said Susan Shirk, former deputy assistant secretary of state and chair of the 21st Century China Center at the University of California San Diego School of Global Politics and Strategy.
Shirk said Blinken’s trip to Beijing would reflect whether the ruling Chinese Communist Party, “having just made a sudden pragmatic reversal in its Covid policy, … is willing to moderate other foreign and domestic policies to cut costs, they caused China”.
Neither the Ministry of Foreign Affairs nor the Chinese government have released details of Blinken’s upcoming visit to Beijing. The Chinese embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment. But State Department spokesman Ned Price said last month that “Russia’s war on Ukraine will be on the agenda.”
Blinken is also likely to push for a lifting of the suspensions of high-level bilateral contacts – including counter-narcotics cooperation and military dialogue – imposed by Beijing in August in retaliation for the then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi‘s trip to Taiwan. Blinken is also under pressure to secure the release of US citizens unjustly detained in China and to voice government concerns about what the State Department last week described as “China’s continued and accelerated expansion of its nuclear arsenal.”
Qin – who took over as foreign minister in January after a mostly chilly 17 months as China’s ambassador to the US – has signaled he is open to making Blinken’s visit a success. In a farewell tweet Earlier this month, Qin hailed previous “sincere, profound and constructive meetings” with Blinken and said he expects “a continuation of close working ties with him for a better China-US relationship.” That suggests Beijing wants to halt the decline in bilateral ties that has prompted the US to limit exports of microchips for advanced computing and military applications and to deepen its military alliance with China’s arch-rival Japan.
But former Foreign Minister Wang Yi, whose appointment to head the office of the Central Commission on Foreign Affairs earlier this month makes him China’s best diplomat, could make it an uphill battle.
“The United States has stubbornly continued to view China as its main competitor and engaged in open blockade, repression and provocation against China,” Wang said in a speech last month.
