US Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns said Tuesday the United States is “ready to talk” to China, and expressed hope that Beijing would “meet us halfway on this.”
Burns, however, did not give a clear answer about when Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s trip to China – which was postponed in February – would be rescheduled.
“Our view is we need better channels between the two governments and deeper channels, and we are ready to talk,” Burns said at an event at the Stimson Center, which he attended virtually.
“We’ve never been shy of talking, and we hope the Chinese will meet us halfway on this,” he said.
Burns reiterated Blinken’s trip to China would be rescheduled “when conditions are appropriate for his visit” adding that the US is ready for “a more broad-based engagement at the cabinet level.”
“(I)t’s hard for me to predict at this at this point when this kind of reengagement will reoccur, but we have never supported an icing of this relationship,” Burns said.
Burns’ comments come after what has been a tumultuous year in relations between Washington and Beijing. Tensions soared following a visit by former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan and after a Chinese surveillance balloon traversed the US, leading Blinken to call off that planned visit to China.
“Access for all of us in the US government, and that includes members of our cabinet, has really ebbed and flowed over the last year,” Burns said Tuesday. “There have been periods of time, I’m thinking now of early summer of last year, where we had a lot of access and a lot of communication back and forth.”
“And then other periods, say just in the immediate wake of Speaker Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan last summer, where the Chinese have shut down channels.”
The ambassador said, however, that after…
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