Daniel Kritenbrink, assistant US secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs – the most senior American official confirmed to have visited China since an alleged Chinese spy balloon was shot down in US airspace in early February – met with Ministry of Foreign Affairs Executive Vice-Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu. Kritenbrink’s week-long trip will also include a stop in New Zealand.
“The two sides had candid, constructive and fruitful communication on promoting the improvement of Sino-US relations and properly managing differences in accordance with the consensus of the two heads of state meeting in Bali last November,” China’s foreign ministry said in a brief statement on Tuesday. The statement said China “stated its solemn position on Taiwan and other major issues of principle” and both sides agreed to continue to maintain communication.
The State Department said in a short readout on Monday that the two sides exchanged views on the bilateral relationship, cross-strait issues, channels of communication and other matters. “US officials made clear that the United States would compete vigorously and stand up for US interests and values,” it said. In a follow-up briefing, State Department deputy spokesman Vedant Patel added that the two sides also discussed climate, fentanyl precursors, human rights and wrongfully detained American citizens.
The trip followed reports of a secret trip to China by CIA director William Burns last month and recent meetings between commerce ministers Wang Wentao and Gina Raimondo in Washington. US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and top Chinese diplomat Wang Yi also met in Austria. Kritenbrink is accompanied on the China leg of his trip this week by Sarah Beran, senior director for China and Taiwan affairs at the National Security Council, while Nicholas Burns, the US ambassador to China, also took part in meetings. The three also met with Yang Tao from the foreign ministry’s department of North America and Oceania affairs.
The high-level meeting came after the American and Chinese defence chiefs crossed paths – but did not hold talks – at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore over the weekend.
In separate sessions, Li Shangfu and Lloyd Austin traded rhetoric over Taiwan and regional security. The conference was overshadowed by a close encounter between US and Chinese warships in the Taiwan Strait on Saturday. The US accused the Chinese warship of making an “unsafe” manoeuvre by crossing in front of the American destroyer.
The Chinese military defended its action as “necessary measures” and accused the US of “deliberate provocations”. Even before the balloon saga, relations between China and the US plummeted following then-US House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan last August.
Kritenbrink’s trip is seen as part of a US bid to ease those tensions. But Chinese tabloid Global Times dismissed the effort, saying on Sunday that it was driven more by America’s interest in portraying itself as seeking communication with Beijing.
US President Joe Biden has signalled his intention to speak to Chinese President Xi Jinping soon. “The president will have another conversation with President Xi at the appropriate time,” said National Security Council spokesman John Kirby in a separate briefing on Monday.
“And I’m sure that when he does, he’ll be just as candid with President Xi then as he has been in the past in terms of our concerns, the challenges in this bilateral relationship, but also about the opportunities that still remain and [that] we want to continue to pursue.”
Kirby added that Kritenbrink’s visit was not planned to overlap with the 34th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators. “You can imagine that a trip to Beijing by US officials takes some time to plan,” he said. Sullivan underscored hopes for a meeting between Biden and Xi in an interview with CNN on Sunday, saying the two leaders would meet “at some point” as American officials continued to engage their Chinese counterparts at senior levels over the coming months.
Additional reporting by Bochen Han and Igor Patrick in Washington