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The Chinese Foreign Ministry on Wednesday dismissed rumors of a potential visit to China by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in the near future, saying they have nothing to share on that, after a number of US media outlets have hyped an alleged official visit by Blinken to China in the upcoming weeks.
The remarks came as Bloomberg reported on Tuesday that Blinken is set to visit China to meet top Chinese officials. A scheduled Blinken visit to China in February was scrapped after the “balloon incident,” which added tensions to the China-US relationship.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin also noted on Wednesday that China and the US maintain necessary communication. The responsibility for the current challenges facing China-US relations does not lie with China. The US needs to respect China’s core interests and major concerns, stop interfering in China’s internal affairs, stop harming China’s interests, and stop calling for communication on the one hand and making provocations on the other. The US needs to work with China in the same direction and bring the bilateral relations back on the track of healthy and stable development.
The US is trying to test China’s reaction to Blinken’s potential visit through media hype and is trying to shape its own image as a promoter for communication, experts told the Global Times on Wednesday.
Washington is eager to cooperate with China the way it wants to, and it is also eager to show the world a posture of “willingness to talk to China,” Diao Daming, an associate professor at the Renmin University of China in Beijing, told the Global Times on Wednesday “But the series of actions it has pulled recently reflect its duplicity and self-contradiction, which is seen clearly by the international community.”
Bloomberg said the gesture shows that the US “looks to resume high-level communication despite continued tensions,” which is clearly an impression the US intends to make, said Diao.
Lü Xiang, a research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times on Wednesday that Washington is good at swaying public opinion in the way they understand it, and to get people to think in his direction.
Observers noted that the international community should be wary of the US purposely setting an agenda for China, and then attributing the chilly state of China-US relations to the Chinese side, a plot that is unlikely to succeed.
Nonetheless, it does appear from a series of recent releases that the US has plans to stay engaged with China in the future, Lü noted. While the US is still playing with strategic ambiguity, it has realized that tensions are negative for both sides and the world.
China has always welcomed dialogue and cooperation, Diao said.
“But a dialogue requires the necessary conditions and atmosphere,” he said. “It is impossible to have dialogue for the sake of dialogue, much less to unilaterally satisfy US hegemonic demands. Such dialogues are unlikely to be welcomed by China.”
“What the US is doing has been destroying the atmosphere, so their ‘desire to cooperate’ is meaningless no matter how much it is emphasized, Diao noted.
Global Times
