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As I see it | Antony Blinken’s Beijing visit may have pulled US-China relations out of free fall, but it may take more to settle their differences
- Little concrete progress came from the US secretary of state’s visit to China this week, but at least signs of a diplomatic thaw are now visible
- However, Beijing still has reason to feel aggrieved at the expansion of the US containment strategy, but its own actions have hardly helped to ease tensions
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It is rare these days for China’s leader to talk positively about the relationship with the United States.
President Xi Jinping’s unspecified warnings in the past month about “worst-case and extreme scenarios”, as well as “perilous storms” ahead, have left China watchers scratching their heads about what he meant, raising the spectre of a superpower conflict.
That’s why the world breathed a sigh of relief when he told the visiting US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday that it “is very good” that the two sides were able to make progress on stabilising their free-falling ties.
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Blinken, the first top American diplomat to visit Beijing in five years, appeared more cautious when he indicated that direct, candid engagement was an end in itself when the relationship is “at a point of instability”.
But wrapping up the two-day visit on Monday, he told a briefing that: “Progress is hard. It takes time. And it’s not the product of one visit, one trip, one conversation.
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As expected, little substantive progress was announced after the “candid and constructive” talks, apart from a reciprocal visit to Washington by Foreign Minister Qin Gang.
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