Top US diplomat Antony Blinken looks forward to meeting China’s Wang Yi to build on ‘important conversations’

Invitation formally extended to Beijing’s newly renamed foreign minister as an autumn date is targeted, says American secretary of state

Blinken alludes to recent cabinet-level discussions US has carried out amid efforts to stabilise bilateral ties

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Top Chinese diplomat Wang Yi and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken shake hands during their bilateral discussion on the sidelines of an Association of Southeast Asian Nations meeting in Jakarta, Indonesia, on July 13, 2023. Photo: Reuters

Published: 4:10am, 4 Aug 2023Updated: 6:58am, 4 Aug 2023

America’s top diplomat on Thursday expressed a wish to meet his newly reappointed Chinese counterpart Wang Yi in the US in the coming months to build on the “important conversations” he had with senior Chinese officials in Beijing in June.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters at the United Nations headquarters in New York that he had invited then-foreign minister Qin Gang to visit at a “mutually convenient time” and had formally extended the invitation to Wang.

“We are looking at the fall,” said Blinken of a possible meeting. “We don’t have a response yet, but we just extended that invitation”.

“I would expect we’ll have an opportunity to see each other and to continue the important conversations that I had in Beijing, that a number of my colleagues in the cabinet had.”

“Others will be going, and we fully expect Chinese counterparts to come to the United States,” Blinken added.

Last week, after weeks of Qin’s whereabouts going unexplained, Wang was named to take over as China’s foreign minister, a position he previously held from 2013 to last December. Wang also directs the Office of the Central Foreign Affairs Commission of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party.

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