US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will meet top Chinese officials on March 18 during a stop in Alaska, the State Department said on Wednesday, marking the first high-level in-person contact between the two countries under the Biden administration.
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan will join the meeting in Anchorage with China's top diplomat, Yang Jiechi, and State Councillor Wang Yi. The meeting will follow Blinken's first overseas trip to US key allies Japan and South Korea.
The two sides will discuss “a range of issues,” the department said in a statement without giving further details. China's embassy in Washington did not respond immediately to a request for say.
President Joe Biden's administration has committed to reviewing elements of US policies towards China, as the world's two largest economies navigate frosty relations that sank to their lowest depths in decades during the Trump administration.
Biden and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, held their first phone call as leaders last month and appeared at odds on most issues, even as Xi warned that confrontation would be a “disaster” for both nations.
Blinken told Yang in a phone call earlier in February that the US would stand up for human rights and democratic values in Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong.
He also pressed China to condemn the military coup in Myanmar, and reaffirmed that Washington will work with allies to hold China accountable for efforts to threaten stability of Indo-Pacific, including across the Taiwan Strait.
The talks with China will follow a visit by Blinken and US. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to Japan and South Korea next week, as well as an online summit on Friday between Biden and the leaders of Japan, India and Australia.
That will be the first leader-level meeting of the four-country group, known as the Quad, seen as part of US efforts to boost its diplomacy in Asia to balance China's growing military and economic power.
Bonnie Glaser, an Asia expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said holding the meeting after the engagements with partners in Asia would send the message to Beijing that US alliances are strong.
“The Biden administration has crafted this arrangement to signal that it is engaging from a position of strength,” Glaser said, adding that she expected discussions to focus on areas of disagreement, including China's policies towards Hong Kong, its pressure on Taiwan, its treatment of Uighurs, and what Washington sees as economic coercion against Australia.
“If the Chinese repeat their messages contained in recent speeches that the US is to blame for the problems in the US-China relationship and therefore the ball is in the US court, then nothing positive will come of this meeting,” she said.
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