(Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will meet top Chinese diplomat Wang Yi on Thursday as officials gather in Indonesia for ASEAN meetings, the State Department said in announcing the latest in series of interactions between the rival superpowers.
Wang is representing China at the Jakarta meetings involving the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and partner countries after Beijing said Foreign Minister Qin Gang would not attend due to health reasons.
Blinken met Qin and Wang in Beijing last month, marking the first visit to China by a U.S. secretary of state in five years. It was aimed at bringing stability to intense rivalry between the superpowers, which are also the world’s two largest economies
U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen visited China earlier this month and climate envoy John Kerry is to visit next week.
Wang, who is the foreign policy chief for the Chinese Communist Party, ranks above Qin, who as the foreign minister is the government’s foreign policy chief.
China’s ambassador to the United States held a rare meeting at the Pentagon on Wednesday with the top U.S. defense official for Asia, the Pentagon said, in talks that followed U.S. criticism of Chinese reluctance to engage in military communications.
Analysts see the meetings as part of efforts to clear the way for a summit between President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping later in the year, but tensions remain high.
On Tuesday, the U.S.-led NATO alliance issued a strongly worded communique at a summit in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius saying that China challenged its interests, security and values with its “ambitions and coercive policies”.
Beijing lashed back at the accusation and said it opposed any attempt by the military alliance to expand its footprint into the Asia-Pacific region.
Last week, the senior State Department official for East Asia, Daniel Kritenbrink, said Blinken would work with ASEAN members in Jakarta in response to “an upward trend of unhelpful and coercive and irresponsible Chinese actions.”
(Reporting by David Brunnstrom and Simon Lewis; Additional reporting by Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Michael Perry)
