Antony Blinken made an official visit to Beijing. Tangible outcomes may be hard to spot, but the visit was a highly visible step in the right direction toward stabilising relations between the US and China. 

This week saw the first visit by a US secretary of state to Beijing in five years. Antony Blinken touched down on 18 June and went straight into meetings with Director of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Central Foreign Affairs Office Wang Yi, State Councilor and Foreign Minister Qin Gang, and finally President Xi Jinping. Blinken’s meetings China’s top two ranking diplomats spanned several hours each, while his meeting with Xi lasted just over a half hour.  

The spectacle of diplomacy was on high display in Beijing from start to finish. No red carpet was rolled out for Blinken’s arrival, and he was kept in the dark about his meeting with Xi until an hour before it took place. Yet there was nothing spontaneous about that meeting. It was an extremely carefully orchestrated affair. Take the table they sat around: Xi was at the head all by himself, and Blinken was to one side, indicating a lower level of importance. 

Topics of discussion included the status of Taiwan, China’s relationship with Russia, manufacturing and supply chains, human rights, and defence technology and communications, among others. The war in Ukraine was a key topic of discussion. The Chinese stuck to the official line that they are not supplying weapons to Russia, and Blinken urged for greater oversight of Chinese firms that could potentially supply weapons and technology to Russia to aid its campaign. On trade, much was made of the current US efforts to cut China out of critical technology supply chains. Chinese officials accused the US of trying to suppress technological development in China, while Blinken’s team emphasised that the goal of legislation such as the CHIPS Act and Inflation Reduction Act were to de-risk and diversify supply chains, not to decouple from China. Both sides also reaffirmed their positions on Taiwan. 

Blinken devoted considerable effort to reestablishing a line of contact between top Chinese and American military officials, but communications remain frozen for now. At present, an issue that arises that would trigger a military response, there is no way for officials in one country to contact their counterparts to establish whether or not that issue is deliberate. This was a signficiant concern during the spy balloon episode earlier this year, and the US was left with no choice but to shoot down the balloon after they were unable to ascertain its intended purpose for being in US airspace. China’s reluctance to establish such crisis communication is based on the fact that if China does pick up a crisis phone call, it would be acknowledging that there is, in fact, a crisis. Given the sheer number of grey zone activities China is engaged in, it is unsurprising that China wants to maintain at least a façade of plausible deniability. 

One promising area for future cooperation is in creating tighter regulation for fentanyl production. The US is currently in the throes of an opioid crisis, with 109,680 fentanyl overdose deaths recorded in 2022. China is the top producer of the precursor chemicals used to manufacture fentanyl. Some of these precursor chemicals are sold to drug cartels, which then manufacture the fentanyl-based products responsible for many of the overdoses seen in the US. Chinese officials seemed receptive to exploring avenues for such cooperation, but again concrete steps forward were not agreed upon.  

Blinken noted that both sides recognise the need to stabilise the relationship, a sentiment also reflected in Chinese media reports of the visit. China acknowledged the relationship was at a low point and that continuing the downward spiral would not be in the interest of either country, with the US generally in agreement.  

However, on both sides, the domestic narrative is much different from the top-level messaging. Each side is painting the other as the primary aggressor in the relationship. Both in the meetings and in messaging put out by state-owned media, China has made clear its belief that the US responsible for the deterioration in relations between the two countries. Among other perceived slights, China has accused US politicians of fearmongering and promoting distrust of China among their constituents. While it’s true that a range of recent federal, state, and local legislative initiatives have directly or indirectly targeted China, the need for compromise in the relationship is absolutely two-sided.  

So, what should countries in the Asia-Pacific take away from this meeting? Last year, Penny Wong began talking about the concept of finding a strategic equilibrium, rather than choosing between the US and China. Wong’s vision is for a regional order where countries are empowered to make their own sovereign choices rather than be forced to one side or the other. Blinken’s messaging has very much been along these same lines. Both the US and China have a strong presence in the region. While that presence is primarily strategic for them, the impacts, particularly on smaller states in the region, are inherently local. It is in fact not in their interest to pick one side or the other, and it’s important for China, the United States, Australia, and other larger regional powers to acknowledge this reality.  

Going into the visit, the US State Department was clear about managing expectations and generally accepted that the best possible outcome of Blinken’s visit would be further high-level talks between the US and China. On this front, Blinken seems to have found success. Both Qin and Wang have been invited to visit Washington in the coming months, and other high-level meetings are being explored. 

Maintaining dialogue is critical as sides need to understand what each other’s red lines are and how those lines are shifting, moving, or evolving. Constructing “guardrails” for the relationship, as Biden and Xi agreed to do in Bali last year over the course of subsequent high-level meetings, is generally a good idea. Restricting those guardrails to a matter of discussion among diplomats provides room for high-level officials on both sides to discuss their presence privately without having to “prove” anything to their domestic constituents. Making guardrails official could end up causing greater instability as China is well known to push boundaries in order to demonstrate that it has the upper hand. With both sides in agreement that stability is necessary for their own good and the good of the world, skillful diplomacy all around has never been more important.  

Competition among superpowers is a wanted and healthy state of affairs. Conflict, obviously, is not. 

Nancy Schneider is the national operations manager for the Australian Institute of International Affairs (AIIA) and the editor-in-chief of Australian Outlook. She tweets at @NC_Schneider.

This article is published under a Creative Commons License and may be republished with attribution.