The two officials, who last saw each other in October, will meet against a backdrop of bilateral tensions over a range of issues, including Taiwan.
US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken will hold talks this week with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Bali, the State Department announced Tuesday.
The two officials, who last saw each other in October, will meet against a backdrop of bilateral tensions over a range of issues, including Taiwan.
“I think that in the course of the talks, we will be able to discuss (installing) a guardrail, so to speak, around our relationship so that our competition does not devolve into errors of judgment or a showdown,” Daniel Krittenbrink told reporters , responsible for the Asia-Pacific region at the State Department.
The meeting will take place as US President Joe Biden prepares to hold talks with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, who has not traveled abroad since the outbreak of the new coronavirus pandemic.
Before traveling to Thailand on Saturday, where he is expected to discuss the situation in Myanmar in particular, Mr. Blinken will also meet with his Indonesian counterpart, but not with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, US diplomatic spokesman Ned said later. Price.
“We wish Russia would give us a reason to hold a bilateral meeting,” Mr. Price said, “but from Moscow we see nothing but brutality and aggression against Ukraine and Ukrainians.”
Meetings between U.S. and Chinese officials, once constant, have all but ground to a halt during the pandemic as tensions have escalated between the world’s two largest economies.
Mr Blinken and US President Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, met in March 2021 with their Chinese counterparts in Alaska. That meeting was marked by an unprecedented public display of the two states’ deep differences.
Beyond trade, China and the US have drawn knives over Taiwan’s fate.
Moreover, Washington and Beijing diverge strikingly in their response to the war in Ukraine. The Americans are leading Western retaliation against Russia, the Chinese insist on maintaining a close relationship with Vladimir Putin’s government.
China, for example, has dramatically increased the amount of Russian oil it buys.
Rivalry with the Asian giant is a declared strategic priority for Mr. Biden, who opposes Beijing’s ambitions in Asia, the Pacific and the world at large.
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