Antony Blinken’s visit to China could be a success even without breakthrough agreements: analysts

Trip by top US envoy is first step ‘to determine if there is sufficient mutual intent to try to moderate the trajectory’ of the bilateral relationship
Visit also expected to boost Beijing’s charm offensive as well as set stage for other top American officials seeking to visit China

US-China relations

Bochen Hanin Washington

Published: 6:25am, 17 Jun 2023

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The measure of success for US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s highly anticipated visit to China is not whether it produces breakthrough agreements but whether it re-establishes some predictability to the relationship, according to analysts.

After months of bilateral acrimony following incidents like a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon detected over American territory – a high-profile setback for relations that derailed Blinken’s planned February visit to Beijing – analysts argue that the coming trip by Washington’s top envoy is more important for testing the future of the relationship than for any substantive discussions that will take place.

“The trip is the first step in an exploratory process to determine if there is sufficient mutual intent to try to moderate the trajectory of the relationship,” said Ryan Haas, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank.

Blinken’s visit affords him an opportunity to reaffirm core American principles amid China’s ascent and “maybe even to do a little better job” at making diplomatic inroads than the administration as a whole has done, said Michael O’Hanlon, also of Brookings.

“The trip, in either direct or maybe implicit ways, can help signal that kind of a return to normalcy where our goals are about sort of guiding China back towards a path of peaceful rise and not viewing it as our next enemy,” O’Hanlon added.

Blinken is slated to hold meetings with senior Chinese officials on Sunday and Monday. He will be the first US cabinet-level official to visit China since 2019, the first secretary of state since 2018, and the highest-ranking US government official since President Joe Biden took office in January 2021.

Experts anticipate that Blinken will be granted, per custom, a visit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, though no official announcement has yet been made. Blinken was also expected to meet Xi in February.

Part of the reason for Xi’s taking a meeting with Blinken is because Chinese leaders would want the same access granted to them when they visit the US, Haas said.

Ahead of Blinken visit, China urges US to avoid ‘illusion’ of strength

And if the two were not to meet, that would send a message that something had gone wrong, according to Patricia Kim, another Brookings fellow.

“Xi Jinping actually just made time for Bill Gates and so it would be striking if he didn’t make time for the secretary,” she said, referring to the Chinese leader’s meeting with the Microsoft co-founder and billionaire philanthropist in Beijing on Friday.

Blinken’s trip this week is also primed to serve as the opening gambit for major global meetings like the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders’ summit in San Francisco in November and the Group of 20 leaders’ summit in September.

And it is expected to set the stage for trips to China by other top US officials, including Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo and Secretary of Treasury Janet Yellen, both of whom have voiced interest in making the journey.

Blinken’s visit would transpire after multiple meetings held between senior American officials, including his February meeting with Wang Yi, China’s top diplomat, in Munich, and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan’s May meeting with Yi in Vienna. Raimondo and US Trade Representative Katherine Tai met last month with Chinese Commerce Minister Wang Wentao in the US.

In addition, William Burns, director of the US Central Intelligence Agency, and Daniel Kritenbrink, assistant US secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, both recently returned from visits to China.

Still, experts say the possibilities for diplomatic advance have attenuated since the early months of this year, right after Biden and Xi’s November meeting at the G20 in Bali. Earlier this month, Chinese defence minister Li Shangfu declined a meeting with US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin Lloyd Austin at the Shangri-La Dialogue.

Kurt Campbell, Biden’s special adviser for Indo-Pacific affairs, on Wednesday said Blinken had three goals for the trip: establish communication channels to discuss “important challenges, address misperceptions, and prevent miscalculation”; speak out on US concerns on a range of issues; and explore potential cooperation on transnational challenges, including how to increase people-to-people exchange.

But the Biden administration has made clear it is not entering the meeting intending to make any breakthroughs. It has also stressed that competition drives the relationship and that China is the US’s greatest geopolitical challenge.

In response, Beijing on Friday said Washington should not contain and suppress China under the guise of competition and that viewing China as its biggest challenge was a “serious misjudgment”. Days earlier, Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang urged Blinken to “show respect” and stop undermining China’s interests.

Are US-China ties headed for a thaw or just an era of managing differences?

The tone coming from both sides in the post-meeting readouts would be important to watch, observers said.

For Beijing officials, Blinken’s visit is a facet of their “charm offensive” and would help them “even if there’s no specific progress”, according to David Dollar, another Brookings senior fellow.

Noting the slowing Chinese economy and falling confidence in it from the foreign and domestic private sector, Dollar said the trip could show Europe and China’s allies in the US that Beijing is willing to cooperate in “stopping the downward spiral” with Washington.

As a result, Blinken’s visit could reinforce “European reluctance to go full in with the United States on technology competition with China and containing China”.

Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang and US envoy break diplomatic ice

Haas said the visit would present a “test of discipline” for Blinken and his team to “tune out the noise” and focus on what the Chinese were conveying behind closed doors.

But it is unlikely that Biden would be able to claim progress in establishing “guardrails” to “responsibly manage” bilateral competition, experts say.

As the US has largely framed the relationship in terms of zero-sum competition, China would be sceptical of any such guardrails, according to Michael Swaine of the Quincy Institute, another Washington-based think tank.

Before any serious progress is made, Swaine said, “there needs to be a recognition by both sides that each side is contributing to this negative dynamic”.