US Secretary of State Antony Blinken visits China | BBC News

US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken is in China with the aim of stabilizing relations between the countries. Mr. Blinkin has been at Shang High holding meetings with business leaders and is now heading to Beijing for talks with Foreign Minister Wang Yi, although tensions have eased. Since last year, disagreements have persisted over issues such as trade and security when I speak to our China correspondent, Steven McDonald, who is in Beijing for us, so there has been a cordial note to start with a bit of diplomacy over the basketball, but the stakes are high. Yeah, I mean it's interesting that you say tensions have gone down since last year and yet in the last seven days it's like they've risen again and that's partly because Anthony Blinkin, before he came here , accused China of being Russia's main sponsor in its war in Ukraine and of course the government in Beijing responded very angrily to this, so we might expect that when the US Secretary of State finally arrives to Beijing for his talks with Wang Yi, his Chinese counterpart and even possibly with Shiin Ping we still don't know that they will be talking about these tense issues uh possibly quite frankly I mean you would like to be a fly on the wall to actually hear that and then I want to say some of the issues including support for Russia and Ukraine tell us about that and other hot topics on the agenda yes I mean a lot of hot topics where everywhere you look they have things that they are not with agree and in fact, the issues that generate quite a bit of tension are the US ban on Tik Tock.

We provide military support to Israel. We provide military support to Taiwan. China provides support to Russia. I mean, that's before we even get to the trade and all these issues about micro blocking. microchips and other technologies that could be used in military applications, now said, both sides are still trying to let them know a lot of effort in this journey to also generate goodwill. Anthony Blinkin went to a basketball game here, apparently a very close game that J Jang overcame. Shanghai by one point and then when he met with the top boss of the Shanghai Communist Party, he mentioned that he was at the basketball game last night, so that kind of thing generates good will and in the meeting between those two leaders, it could give a quick idea of ​​it um Chen Jining, the Shanghai party

secretary

, said that whether China and the United States choose cooperation or confrontation, it will affect the well-being of both people, both nations and also the future of humanity and then Anthony Blinkin He responded by saying that we have an obligation to our people. an obligation to the world to manage the relationship between our countries and certainly other world leaders will be watching this meeting and the relationship in general between China and the United States to see if they can establish some stability at least on the trade front because the global economy frankly you need it Steven McDonald, thank you very much, well, let's talk now with Yuka Kashi, professor on China and international politics at SOAS, thank you very much for being with us, so how would you describe the current relationship between the United States and China?

Well, the relationship between the United States and China is really at a point of tension right now. In fact, you saw the Senate Taiwan Aid bill, which has actually been one of the sour points between us and China, given that we have one China. politics and um China views Taiwan as inherently part of its um uh uh sovereign

state

so essentially um this is actually one of the key hot-button areas that would be up for discussion at tomorrow's meeting um I think this is actually looking like every time. more to a very tense scenario similar to that of the Cold War.

If you look at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' most recent

state

ment on the Chinese government's Blink visit, you'll see that there are three main points raised in the statement, which is basically about um. perception and conversation and management of disagreements and you can see that it is going to be a very long and difficult meeting that Mr. Blinky has with you tomorrow and to what extent it is a problem in the economic aspect and there is, for example, the perspective of more tariffs on Chinese imports and restrictions on China's access to advanced semiconductors, how much of that will be part of the conversation this time?

I think the economy has been one of the key issues around relations between us and China and you can see that going back to the Trump administration. when you had the trade war between the United States, China, but it's always been an issue and you can see it coming up again with Blink's visit to Shanghai when he met a businessman there in that sense that they were emphasizing a level playing field and Basically , have this type of fair trade with China and you can see that we are also seeing a point where we have economic security very high on the agenda of both parties in the sense of what we do with the resilience of the chain of supply, so, um, you.

We are actually seeing a complex factor that ensures more fluid trade relations between the two, but we are actually seeing a very different type of regime change in trade where we actually see a very different scenario than what we saw when we were under globalization. What about the Ukraine issue? I mean, one of the goals seems to be to try to persuade China not to send to Russia components that can then be used in the war in Ukraine. What are the chances that they can do that? dissuading the Chinese from doing that is a very difficult issue given that China and Russia are very strong in their type of relationship and given that, as you see, on the part of the Chinese government, the perception and misunderstandings are repeated too much, you are going to have a very tough discussion on issues related to Ukraine and an attempt to unravel this kind of complex relationships that you see with us and China, but you actually see Russia on the sidelines given that you actually see this kind of um Rebirth of a cold It's a scenario of war and you can see this also in the statement that China issued, which you know raises issues like orus, so, um, a lot of discussion about containment of China, a lot of discussion about this kind of cold war language, um, so It's a very difficult conversation that we'll look at tomorrow, but I hope you know that both sides are talking about conversation and both sides are talking about how to handle this important relationship.

Yuka Kobayashi, thank you very much for taking the time to speak with us.