On Musk heel, Blinken to visit China; economic Cold War engagement on card
Pix credit Twitter @SecBlinken
By Manish Anand
New Delhi, June 9: Close on the heel of the visit of China by Tesla owner Elon Musk, US Secretary of the State Antony Blinken is likely to travel to Beijing amid deepening fault lines between the Communist nation and the western countries in the aftermath of the Taiwan tension, as well as the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Blinken visit was planned within the first few weeks of Xi Jinping assuming presidency of the Communist country in his third term. But the visit was cancelled after the US Air Force shot down suspected Chinese spy balloons over its own sky, as well as one flying in the Canadian airspace.
While Musk announced the business engagement with China by throwing his weight behind Beijing amid rising calls for decoupling with the Communist nation, the US maintained back channel with the Chinese officials to resume official engagements. Xi and US president Joe Biden have held one virtual meeting and another bilateral on the sidelines of the G20 Summit in Bali, Indonesia, and both the engagements were held with visible signs of growing distrust between the two countries.
Politico in a report has stated that Blinken visit is planned as early as the next week. Mike Pompeo was the last US Secretary of State to have visited Beijing in 2018.
Politico quoted sources to state that Blinken visit details are being finalized even while officially the visit has not been confirmed. But Blinken, as part of the US effort to mend ties with key partners, recently was in Saudi Arabia, while the agenda was stated to form joint action against the Islamic terror groups.
The US and China drifted apart following the visit for the former US Congress Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan, which sent Beijing on a sabre-rattling across the Taiwanese straits. The US bid to raise its stake in the Indo Pacific has also riled Beijing. The recent G7 Summit in Hiroshima also hit out at China for its bid to defeat the efforts of the western nations to tame Russia for waging war on Ukraine.
However, the US appears following in the heels of Europe to court China to find way out of recession and also secure economic interests, while also not throwing away the Chinese markets. Germany and France have been courting Xi aggressively to escape the fury of the recession, which the strategic experts have noted as signs of the US being left stranded in its endeavour to steer the global economy away from the Chinese domination.
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