Washington
US secretary of state Antony Blinken will have a candid discussion about the war in Ukraine with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi during a summit in Indonesia that’s set to be dominated by the fallout from Russia’s invasion, a top official said.
We’ve had a number of communications at senior levels with our Chinese counterparts about what we expect, not just from the People’s Republic of China but from really all responsible members of the international community regarding Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Daniel Kritenbrink told sources in Washington.
The two senior diplomats would exchange views on current China-US relations and major international and regional issues, the foreign ministry in Beijing said in a statement.
Blinken leaves for Bali on Wednesday to attend the G20 foreign ministers meeting before continuing on to Thailand. He will meet Wang on Saturday, the first face-to-face encounter between the two since October, amid heightened geopolitical tensions between the US and China, which announced a no limits friendship with Russia just before the invasion of Ukraine in late February.
Blinken’s priority in his meeting with Wang will be to emphasize the US commitment to intense diplomacy with Beijing and to manage responsibly the intense competition between the two countries.
Blinken will lead efforts at the G20 meeting whose members represent about 80% of global GDP to focus on the role Russia’s invasion and effective blockade of Ukrainian grain exports have played in sparking an international food crisis, according to assistant secretary of state for economic and business affairs Ramin Toloui.
