The U.S. State Department and Chinese Foreign Ministry confirmed Wednesday that Secretary of State Antony Blinken will visit Beijing next week.
According to the State Department, Blinken will depart for a trip to both China and the United Kingdom on June 16, expected to culminate on June 21. The Chinese Foreign Ministry claims Blinken will stay in China for two days, June 18 and 19.
The Chinese government, through its state media arms, had dismissed an upcoming visit from the secretary of state as a rumor as recently as last week.
The confirmation of the visit followed weeks of speculation that the State Department was planning the travel and refusals from the Chinese Communist Party to address the rumors.
Blinken was reportedly scheduled to visit China in February but canceled his trip following the controversy surrounding the invasion of American airspace by a Chinese aircraft later identified as an espionage vessel. The administration of leftist President Joe Biden allowed the vessel, a balloon, to fly across the continental United States, reportedly gathering intelligence from sensitive American military sites, before shooting it down in the Atlantic Ocean.
The Chinese government vehemently denied that the balloon had any espionage purpose and angrily condemned Washington for ultimately shooting it down.
Watch — GOP Rep. Stewart: Officials “Don’t Know” if Balloon Got Sensitive Info Despite Their Claims It Didn’t
As China never confirmed the original Blinken visit, the Foreign Ministry also refused to confirm its cancelation on the grounds that a visit was never officially announced. The Global Times, a Chinese government propaganda outlet, huffed that Beijing had had “no time to receive insincere” or “malicious” people like Blinken.
In its announcement on Wednesday, the U.S. State Department said Blinken, while in China, will “meet with senior PRC [People’s Republic of China] officials where he will discuss the importance of maintaining open lines of communication to responsibly manage the U.S.-PRC relationship.”
“He will also raise bilateral issues of concern, global and regional matters, and potential cooperation on shared transnational challenges,” the announcement claimed.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry offered no details on the trip beyond the dates Blinken is expected in the country.
Shortly before the formal confirmation of Blinken’s travels, the top American diplomat held a phone conversation with his Chinese counterpart, Foreign Minister Qin Gang, who reportedly excoriated Blinken for America’s relationship with Taiwan and unilaterally blamed America for any tensions with the Communist Party.
According to the South China Morning Post, citing the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Qin demanded Blinken “show respect” to the Communist Party and said China took no responsibility for any discord between Washington and Beijing.
Qin reportedly told his American counterpart:
I hope that the US side will take practical actions to implement the important consensus of the meeting between the two heads of state in Bali, move in the same direction as the Chinese side, effectively manage differences, promote exchanges and cooperation, and promote the stabilisation of China-US relations.
Qin also insisted America “show respect, stop interfering in China’s internal affairs and stop undermining China’s sovereignty, security and development interests in the name of competition,” particularly regarding Taiwan.
Taiwan is a free, sovereign island state south of China. The Communist Party falsely claims Taiwan is a “province” of China and bullies foreign states and international bodies, such as the United Nations, into refusing to acknowledge Taiwan as a country. China refuses to maintain any diplomatic relations with countries that recognize Taiwan’s sovereignty. The United States, while maintaining close relations with the government in Taipei, does not officially acknowledge Taiwan as a country.
Watch — CNN’s Burnett: “Xi Does Not Care What Biden Says” on Taiwan
The State Department readout of Blinken’s call with Qin omitted any of Qin’s tirade demanding “respect” for the communist point of view.
The statement read:
The Secretary discussed the importance of maintaining open lines of communication to responsibly manage the U.S.-PRC relationship to avoid miscalculation and conflict, addressed a range of bilateral and global issues, and made clear the U.S. would continue to use diplomatic engagements to raise areas of concern as well as areas of potential cooperation.
Blinken’s tenure as secretary of state has been defined by regular meetings with senior Chinese diplomats in which the Communist Party representatives berate Blinken for various alleged “wrongdoings” America has engaged in against the repressive state.
Perhaps the most embarrassing such incident occurred early in Blinken’s tenure, when he met with then-Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and senior Politburo member Yang Jiechi in Anchorage, Alaska, in March 2021. On that occasion, a conversation that did not appear to have any specific objective, Yang ranted for 16 minutes about alleged racism and human rights violations in the United States.
“On human rights, we hope the United States will do better on human rights. China has made steady progress in human rights, and the fact is that there are many problems within the United States regarding human rights, which is admitted by the U.S. itself as well,” Yang said. “The challenges facing the United States in human rights are deep-seated. They did not just emerge over the past four years, such as ‘Black Lives Matter.’ It did not come up only recently.”
China is arguably the world’s worst human rights abuser and has been engaging in genocide against Turkic ethnic groups in occupied East Turkistan since at least 2017, a fact that no reports indicated Blinken addressed during that meeting.
Watch: Pro-Uyghur Group Chants “Terrorist China,” “Nazi China” in Front of the White House
A year later, Yang berated National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan in an “intense” seven-hour meeting that largely focused on Taiwan. Blinken, in turn, met with Wang in Bali, Indonesia, in July 2022 to listen to four separate lists of “U.S. wrongdoings that must stop” for a meeting that reportedly lasted five hours.