Blinken meets China’s Xi Jinping in final day of high-stakes Beijing visit aimed at cooling simmering tensions
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Chinese leader Xi Jinping and top American diplomat Antony Blinken met in Beijing on Monday, in a potentially crucial step toward patching US-China ties after they cratered in the wake of a dispute over a Chinese surveillance balloon earlier this year.
Blinken is the first US Secretary of State to visit Beijing in five years and his talks with senior Chinese officials are seen as a key litmus test for whether some sort of detente can be forged at a time of lingering distrust.
Uncertainty around whether Xi and Blinken would meet during the two-day visit further highlighted the fraught US-China relations and a failure to schedule a face to face would have been seen by Washington as a slight, breaking with a number of previous visits from top American diplomats.