© REUTERS/Leah Millis/Pool/TASS

US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has finally reached China. You might remember how he canceled a visit in early February this year over a Chinese spy balloon above America, which made a real fuss worldwide. And June 18 finally saw Blinken fly to Beijing for two-day talks with the country's leadership.

It should be immediately noted that Blinken's current visit to China has become the first one by a US Secretary of State in five years. Moreover, it took place amid severely deteriorated relations between Beijing and Washington due to an entire range of issues, including Taiwan, the balloon incident, and ongoing discord in trade and technology. Small wonder that during talks with his American counterpart on June 18, Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang said the US-Chinese ties had hit a record historic low.

These talks lasted five and a half hours — longer than planned, and China’s senior Chinese diplomat said Beijing was committed to building stable, predictable, constructive relations with Washington. The Chinese are hopeful that "the US side will uphold an objective and rational understanding of China to meet China halfway, maintain the political foundation of China-US relations, and handle unexpected incidents calmly, professionally and rationally," he noted. In response to Blinken's invitation, Qin Gang expressed readiness to visit the United States "when it is convenient for both parties." To some extent, this may indicate that relations between Beijing and Washington have somewhat moved off dead center.

This is also applicable to Blinken’s having been received by Chinese President Xi Jinping, who said China and the United States have reached progress and agreement on a number of issues. "The Chinese side has made its position clear, and the two sides have agreed to follow through with the common understanding President Joe Biden and I had reached in Bali (at the 2022 G20 summit — ed. note). The two also made progress and reached an agreement on some specific issues, which is good," Xi Jinping said. When meeting with Blinken, the Chinese leader noted that bilateral interaction should be based on "mutual respect and sincerity", expressing hope that the current visit would contribute positively to a stable relationship with the United States.

Washington also started talking about progress with the PRC. When assessing its boss’s negotiations with his Chinese counterpart, the State Department branded them "candid, substantive and constructive." "The Secretary made clear that the United States will always stand up for the interests and values of the American people and work with its allies and partners to advance our vision for the world," the statement reads. Among other things, Blinken emphasized the importance of diplomacy and maintaining open channels of communication across the full range of issues to reduce the risk of misperception and miscalculation. By the way, National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications at the White House John Kirby also touched upon this issue the other day, saying that the United States and China are busy expanding communication channels, and progress has been made along this track.  And yet, he avoided specifics.

Indeed, the Americans claim that their priority now is to establish communication lines to exclude military action in case of a crisis or incidents between ships and aircraft of the two states in the Taiwan Strait. Qin Gang told Blinken that Taiwan was the two countries’ key problem fraught with the greatest risk. Basically, the issue was discussed by the US Secretary of State on June 19 with director of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee Foreign Affairs Commission Office Wang Yi, who stressed that "the United States must truly adhere to the One China principle established by three joint Sino-American communiques, respect China's sovereignty and territorial integrity, and clearly oppose ‘Taiwan independence’."

Assessing the overall outcome of Blinken's visit to Beijing, the American media called the parties’ progress insignificant. "The ambiguity of Blinken’s readout indicates little substantive progress on his agenda items," Politico writes, for instance. According to the outlet, the State Secretary and his Chinese counterpart "are inching toward an off-ramp from months of rancor," but no feasible results have been reached on the key issues that include "concerns over rising tensions over Taiwan, unjustly jailed US citizens in China and Beijing’s alignment with Russia’s war on Ukraine," cannot be achieved succeeded.

Notably, even on the eve of Blinken's visit to China, Washington tried to depreciate public expectations. " We’re not going to Beijing with the intent of having some sort of breakthrough or transformation in the way that we deal with one another," Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Daniel Kritenbrink told reporters before the trip. "We’re coming to Beijing with a realistic, confident approach and a sincere desire to manage our competition in the most responsible way possible."

Perhaps we may assume that Blinken's current visit to Beijing has become part of the renewed high-level US-Chinese interaction, which is gradually gaining momentum after the spy balloon has gone off the boil. Certain shifts have been recently made here, with separate meetings held publicly, including those in the course of Chinese Commerce Minister Wang Wentao’s trip to the United States. Still, other contacts remain beyond vision like the recent meeting between President Joe Biden's National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan with his Chinese counterpart in Vienna, or CIA Director William Burns’ trip to Beijing to discuss intelligence issues last month.

However, one should reserve a judgement that the USA and China have finally broken the ice, because their disagreement is still too strong. Let's not forget that the US national defense strategy adopted in October last year calls China major long-term geopolitical competitor. If so, the PRC will apparently remain America's key rival for many a year, and the one to be first to launch a nuclear strike against the United States. In turn, Beijing makes it clear that the United States is wrong to deem China as its main rival and greatest geopolitical challenge" — nothing good will come of this kind of approach, all in all.