Crucial step taken to stabilise tense US-China relations

It was never going to be simple. Given the low ebb of current US-China relations – to put it mildly – Antony Blinken was always going to have to deal with some difficult rhetoric and some strained smiles during his two-day, high-stakes trip to Beijing. The first by a US secretary of state in five years.

The issues between the two nations are numerous, stretching far back beyond the administration of Joe Biden, a Donald Trump trade war being a particular highlight. Although rhetoric has definitely hardened in recent months, particularly around Taiwan – the democratic island that Beijing claims as its own. The shooting down of an alleged Chinese spy balloon over the US earlier this year – an incident that delayed Blinken's trip until now – only increase the tension.

The United States has long stuck to a policy of “strategic ambiguity” over whether it would respond militarily to an attack on Taiwan, which Beijing has refused to rule out. That, mixed with China's naval ambitions around the region and Washington's strengthening of security agreements with allies to try and strategically contain them, have raised fears of a spiral into an open conflict. The two sides have seen multiple dangerous military incidents, including a near collision of warships in the Taiwan Strait and a close encounter of military jets over the South China Sea.

One of the key pillars of the relationship between the two nations that the US wanted to try and make progress on was the restoration of direct military-to-military communications, to “reduce the risk of misperception and miscalculation” as Blinken said during his trip. Blinken showed little of what would be his obvious disappointment in reporting that Beijing rebuffed those efforts – despite him raising the issue “repeatedly”.

China suggested that US sanctions were to blame. The defence minister, Li Shangfu, who came into post in March, has been sanctioned since 2018 over the purchase of combat aircraft and equipment from Russia's main arms exporter, Rosoboronexport. That only allowed Beijing to make its economic point. Washington has also issued sanctions against Chinese companies, pushed allies to restrict semiconductor tech experts to China and spoken about the need to fight back against Beijing's “economic coercion”.

But pragmatism appears to have won out for now. Beijing has to tackle flagging economic growth reticence by foreign investors, not helped by tensions with the US. Xi told Blinken that China respected US interests and would not “challenge or replace the United States”.

All of this will take more than one conversation to move past, obviously. Both sides appear entrenched in their positions, including on human rights – the US wants to admonish China – and Russia's invasion of Ukraine, where China's refusal to admonish Moscow, and indeed increase its trade partnership, has left Western nations concerned.

But the fact that Blinken did manage to meet President Xi Jinping will be a relief. The meeting may have been relatively short – at around 35 minutes – and only announced an hour before it took place, but it showed willing. Both sides said they were happy with where the two days of talks ended with Xi talking of “progress” and Blinken saying that the US had achieved its objectives for the trip, including raising its concerns directly, trying to set up channels for dialogue and exploring areas of cooperation.

The sentence that will give the rest of the world heart came from Blinken just before he left the country: “The relationship was at a point of instability, and both sides recognised the need to work to stabilise it.”

What these two superpowers do affects us all in some form via the financial markets or global diplomacy. The last thing the world needs at this point in time is a refusal by both nations to deal with each other. These last two days have made things at last a little easier.

While Blinken's meeting with Xi appeared cordial and the six hours between the US secretary of state and Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang on Sunday included an invitation for Mr Qin to visit Washington to continue the talks at a later date – a meeting with Beijing's top diplomat, Wang Yi, early on Monday offered a clear picture of the difficulties that remain.

Mr Wang gave a harsh assessment of US actions, potentially more for Beijing's domestic audience. China's foreign ministry said of the talks that “it is necessary to make a choice between dialogue or confrontation, cooperation or conflict”. There was blame for the “US side's erroneous perception of China, leading to incorrect policies towards China” for the current “low point” in relations.

And, it said the US bore responsibility for halting "the spiraling decline of China-US relations to push it back to a healthy and stable track". It added that Mr Wang had “demanded that the US stop hyping up the 'China threat theory,' lift illegal unilateral sanctions against China, abandon suppression of China's technological development, and refrain from arbitrary interference in China's internal affairs”. Work to do then.

It had been hoped that Blinken's visit would even pave the way for a summit between Xi and Biden later in the year. Overall, this is certainly a step towards that goal.