JAKARTA: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will meet top Chinese foreign policy official Wang Yi on Thursday in Jakarta, their second meeting in as many months as the powers seek to manage tensions.
Blinken and Wang will meet on the sidelines of the ASEAN-plus-three foreign minister talks in the Indonesian capital, the State Department’s public schedule showed.
The meeting is going ahead despite Microsoft recently saying that Chinese hackers had breached US government email accounts, including those of the State Department.
The Jakarta talks come nearly a month after Blinken travelled to Beijing, the first visit by the top US diplomat in nearly five years, and met President Xi Jinping as well as Wang and Foreign Minister Qin Gang.
Since then, there has been a flurry of diplomacy, with Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen visiting Beijing last week and a trip set in the coming days by climate envoy John Kerry.
Blinken says ‘the time is now’ for Sweden to join NATO
Tensions have soared in recent years between the world’s two largest economies over a host of issues including China’s assertiveness in the region including Taiwan and sweeping restrictions imposed by the United States on exports of its advanced semiconductors.
Neither country has predicted breakthroughs in the renewed diplomacy but both have spoken in terms of managing the relationship to make sure that friction does not lead to outright conflict.
Comments
Comments are closed for this article.