Blinken’s Assembly With Xi Jinping Raises Cautious Hope for U.S.-China Thaw

When Antony Blinken travels to Beijing on Sunday, he’ll be the primary U.S. Secretary of State to take action since 2018 and the primary cupboard member to go to China within the Biden administration. Nonetheless, given an more and more fractious bilateral relationship, expectations for the two-day journey had been low—that was till reports emerged Friday that Chinese language President Xi Jinping would break with latest protocol and meet personally with Blinken.

First reported by the Monetary Occasions and since confirmed by diplomatic sources to TIME, Blinken is predicted to take a seat down with Xi to construct on the nascent rapprochement cast with President Joe Biden in Bali last November, when the leaders agreed to discover avenues to stabilize relations between the world’s high two economies.

Xi’s resolution to satisfy Blinken in Beijing has shocked U.S. diplomats given latest frosty engagement between the 2 nations has been ruled by strict adherence to parity of officers’ numbers and rank, with COVID-19 journey restrictions rendering preparations for conferences particularly testy. Nonetheless, given enduring tensions over trade, technology, human rights, military build ups and the status of Taiwan, amongst many different bugbears, few consider that something substantial will emerge from the confab.

“My sense is Secretary Blinken is simply going to Beijing to point out the U.S. may be cheap,” says Sean King, a former U.S. diplomat and now senior vp of political threat agency Park Methods. “No matter ‘deliverables’ there could also be will thus be reassuringly beauty and superficial at most.”

Nonetheless, any face-to-face assembly can hopefully construct belief and pave the best way for what’s already shaping to be a busy schedule of post-pandemic engagement. U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen met Liu He, China’s outgoing high financial strategist, in Zurich final month and is because of go to Beijing later this 12 months. Xi might go to the U.N. Basic Meeting in New York in September and can virtually definitely attend the APEC summit in San Francisco in November. The chance for Xi to peg an extended overdue first state go to to Washington onto both occasion is obvious ought to the political will exist. (Regardless of visiting the U.S. eight times as a Chinese language official of assorted rank, Xi has by no means made a state go to throughout his decade as President.)

Financial expediency stands to be the chief driver of any reconciliation. Professor Wang Yiwei, director of the Institute of Worldwide Affairs at Beijing’s Renmin College, says that following November’s U.S. midterm elections and affirmation of Xi’s protocol-breaking third leadership term a month prior, the 2 sides can tone down the political bombast and concentrate on repairing their respective economies. The White Home’s looming showdown with the Republican-controlled Home of Representatives over elevating the federal government debt ceiling is one other impetus to search out widespread floor with China, says Wang. “We have to develop our financial system, there are alternatives for American enterprise, so Blinken also needs to speak about this.”

But many obstacles persist. Home Speaker Kevin McCarthy has indicated he’ll comply with his predecessor, Nancy Pelosi, by visiting Taiwan, the self-ruling island of 23 million that China claims as its personal territory. Pelosi’s go to final August sparked a furious response from Beijing, together with a commerce embargo and unprecedented navy workout routines. Final week, a 4-Star U.S. Basic told troops in a sensational memo that he expects struggle with China over Taiwan in 2025.

In the meantime, the U.S. and China proceed to needle one another on an virtually day by day foundation. On Wednesday, Blinken introduced the U.S. was reopening its embassy within the Solomon Islands after a three-decade absence in a transfer broadly perceived as a problem to China’s outreach within the Pacific. And on Thursday, the Pentagon was mulling military options after a Chinese language spy balloon was noticed over Montana.

However arguably probably the most urgent fissure within the relationship is Xi’s backing of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s struggle in Ukraine. On Monday, Russia’s Ministry of Overseas Affairs revealed that it anticipated to welcome Xi to Moscow within the spring, which observers have famous would roughly correspond to the primary anniversary of the Feb. 24 full-scale invasion. In fact, Xi’s go to could possibly be perceived as “custom,” says Wang, given he had visited in March 2013, instantly after he first took workplace. At the moment, Xi additionally gave a seminal speech at Moscow State Institute of Worldwide Relations on “a neighborhood with a shared future for mankind,” which later shaped the bedrock of his international relations philosophy.

In actual fact, China’s notion of the struggle in Ukraine has deteriorated, each amongst its plenty and elites, because it has turn out to be clear that what Putin initially deemed a “particular operation” to demilitarize and de-nazify japanese Ukraine is now undeniably a full-scale invasion. The problem for Blinken in Beijing can be to make Xi reevaluate China’s assist of Russia. “Putin mentioned that the operation was to counter NATO growth and a unipolar world,” says Wang. “However now many Chinese language ponder whether he truly seeks an empire like that of Peter the Nice.”

Write to Charlie Campbell at charlie.campbell@time.com.