China has expressed interest in a Biden-Xi meeting but has pressed for concessions, for example the easing of U.S. export controls on advanced semiconductors and other strategically important technologies.
“China believes head-of-state diplomacy is the compass and anchor of China-U.S. relations and has an irreplicable strategic role in guiding the relationship,” Liu Qing, the vice president of the China Institute of International Studies in Beijing, told NBC News last month.
“At present, China-U.S. relations are facing serious difficulties and are at a critical crossroads regarding where to go from here,” Liu said.
Last month, the Ministry of State Security, China’s top spy agency, said Washington was taking a “two-sided” approach to Beijing, accusing it of wanting to combine contact with “control.”
“To truly realize ‘from Bali to San Francisco,’ the United States needs to show enough sincerity,” the ministry said in a long post on its WeChat social media account.
Liu also said China hoped the U.S. would “demonstrate its sincerity.”
“China has principled conditions and major concerns and asks the U.S. to create the right atmosphere, remove the turbulence and create the conditions for the next high-level exchanges between the two countries,” he said.
The U.S. diplomatic outreach to China has also coincided with a period of apparent turmoil inside the Chinese government, with numerous personnel changes. During his visit to Beijing in June, Blinken had invited Qin Gang, the Chinese foreign minister at the time, for further talks in Washington. A month later, Qin was removed from his post without explanation after having disappeared from public view for weeks and was replaced by his predecessor, Wang, who was also invited to Washington.
Wang, 70, who also holds a separate post as China’s top diplomat, is the first senior Chinese official to travel to Washington since Commerce Minister Wang Wentao, who met with Raimondo in late May.
The State Department said last month that Blinken was expected to host Wang in Washington before the end of the year and that Biden hoped to meet with Xi “sometime later this fall.”
“We believe there is no substitute for one-on-one conversations at the leader level, so we will continue to work towards the possibility of that,” spokesperson Matthew Miller said.
Abigail Williams reported from Washington, Keir Simmons reported from London, and Jennifer Jett reported from Hong Kong.
CORRECTION (Oct. 23, 2023, 11:45 p.m. ET): A previous subhead on this article misstated whom Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi will be meeting with during his visit to Washington this week. He will meet with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, not President Joe Biden.