China’s Foreign Ministry
announcement that Wang would attend the conference made no mention of a meeting with Blinken. The State Department announcement of
Blinken’s Munich agenda said his focus would be Ukraine, the Middle East and “transatlantic security.” Neither the State Department nor the Chinese embassy in Washington responded to requests for comment.
The Blinken-Wang meeting agenda in Munich will likely include planning for a phone call between Biden and Xi in the coming months. A senior administration official’s
readout of Sullivan’s meeting with Wang in January mentioned that such a call would occur sometime “this spring,” without elaborating.
Blinken’s upcoming meeting with Wang underscores Washington and Beijing’s efforts to cool the rancor that has roiled U.S.-China ties over the past year. Bilateral relations nosedived following the discovery — and subsequent destruction by U.S. Air Force fighter jets — of
a Chinese spy balloon over the continental United States in February 2023.
Both sides have emphasized the need to maintain open lines of communication to prevent a relationship sorely strained by Chinese
intimidation toward Taiwan, rising tensions between Manila and Beijing
in the South China Sea and Xi’s “
no limits” partnership with Russian President Vladimir Putin from veering into potential conflict.
The White House considers its nine months of focused engagement with Beijing a diplomatic success. In recent weeks Biden administration officials have repeatedly touted how that outreach has resulted in the creation of a
U.S.-China Counternarcotics Working Group, the resumption of
bilateral military-to-military contacts and an agreement to discuss safe development of artificial intelligence.
