U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will travel to Beijing in early February to strengthen relations with the Asian giant by meeting with his Chinese counterpart, Qin Gang, who has served as foreign minister since December 30, according to Politico.
In this way, the head of the U.S. State Department will continue with the commitment to strengthen relations between the United States and China reached at the G20 summit by the leaders of both countries, Joe Biden and Xi Jinping, respectively.
At that summit, which took place in November, Biden and Xi pledged to «keep the lines of communication open», all this after a worsening of bilateral tensions, aggravated after the visit of the former Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi to the island of Taiwan.
Blinken’s visit tests whether the Biden-Xi meeting has paved the way for more productive U.S.-China ties, especially after Xi’s decision to appoint the former Chinese ambassador to Washington as chief diplomat, according to the newspaper.
Qin, who took over as foreign minister in January after 17 months of frosty relations at the Chinese Embassy in the United States, has indicated that he is willing to make Blinken’s visit a success.
«I want to express my sincere thanks to the people of the United States for the strong support and help they gave to me at the Chinese Embassy,» Qin wrote on Twitter after taking leave as ambassador, reviewing the contacts made and has put the number of U.S. states visited at 22.
As ambassador, he boasts of having made «many friends», and now as minister he hopes to continue working for the sake of dialogue. In this sense, he advocated «mutual respect» and «peaceful coexistence», without at any time alluding to political or commercial tensions between Beijing and Washington.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
