After months of acrimony, allegations of espionage and warnings against meddling in each other’s internal affairs, the US and China will this week try to find a way to reopen talks on divisive issues.

including ranging from

nuclear warfare

other

climate change

and to

fentanyl.

United States Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken

was on the schedule

arrive

edit

in Beijing on Sunday in the first high-level contact in China in five years, a potentially momentous diplomatic move that is likely to be only a first step.

Blinken takes a trip that was scrubbed in early February after US officials discovered and eventually shot down a Chinese spy balloon flying over US soil.

Virtually all contact between the world’s two largest economies was cut off over the incident, with relations falling to the lowest level in recent history.

Tensions were already rising during a visit to Taiwan last August by then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat. China claims the self-governing island as its own and is furious when senior US officials appear to give it sovereign recognition.

Now the Biden administration has decided that the time was finally right to embark on what was to be a long and bumpy journey to rapprochement.

What we’ve done on this journey is to establish sustained, regular lines of communication at higher levels, because if we want to make sure that the competition we have with China doesn’t turn into conflict, you start communicating, Blinken said on Friday in Washington before leaving for Beijing.

He said he would look for possible areas of agreement or cooperation, but the most likely outcome is the two nations looking for ways to deal with differences.

“Intense competition requires sustained diplomacy to ensure that competition does not turn into confrontation or conflict,” Blinken said. “That’s what the world expects from both the United States and China.”

As both he and Chinese diplomats downplayed expectations, the two superpowers appear to be far apart on most substantive issues. Yet their economies are intertwined, making a complete break almost impossible.

In addition to the Taiwan conflict, the US is enforcing punitive trade tariffs on key Chinese exports and demanding cooperation in controlling Chinese production and marketing of the deadly drug fentanyl. The Biden administration also wants China to withdraw support for Russia in its war against Ukraine, and is alarmed by China’s diplomatic and economic advances around the world, especially in Africa and Latin America, where alleged Chinese espionage installations in Cuba grabbed headlines last week.

Flash

said his

two-day mission to Beijing is an important but in a sense insufficient step because there is a lot of work to be done.

said Blink.

to dawn

before

the journey, blinking

called called

his Chinese counterpart, Qin Gang, to inform him that he expected to have direct and candid conversations on issues such as human rights and Beijing’s detention of US citizens.

qin

snapped back, warning warned

Shining against interference in Beijing’s internal affairs, China’s foreign ministry said, adding in a statement that the US should respect China’s top concerns, such as Taiwan.

Part of the Chinese anger stems from the expectation officials there had after Biden met Chinese President Xi Jinping in Bali last fall that Washington would become less critical of Beijing’s policies and actions. Instead, tensions rose, especially over Chinese military activity in the Taiwan Strait.

“The Chinese are coming ready to play hardball,” said Carla Freeman, a China expert at the US Institute of Peace in Washington. “They are very cynical about any major acquisition

–

aways” from meeting Blinken.

Chinese state media has taken a controversial tone

before

The arrival of Blinken, indicating that the country does not expect a dramatic turnaround in US-China relations.

Our position is firm: It is impossible to claim a desire for dialogue while suppressing and restraining China, said a state-backed social media account associated with China Central Television.

At best, the Blinken intervention could pave the way for other senior Biden administration officials, such as Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and Presidential Climate Envoy John Kerry, to

travel to visit

Beijing for talks about their respective portfolios. However, military-to-military engagement is less likely to normalize as Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III’s counterpart, Gen. Li Shangfu, remains blacklisted by the US over purchases of Russian-made weapons in 2018.

Neither side wants to say whether Blinken and Xi will meet.

It doesn’t mean they’re going back to the good old days, but I think the key word is stabilizing, said Henry Huiyao Wang, founder of the Non-Governmental Center of China and Globalization in Beijing. I think there is wishful thinking on both sides, but there is also reality.

For China, the most critical issue is Taiwan, whose sovereignty quickly became the most sensitive geopolitical focal point in the US-China relationship after Xi began calling more forcefully for eventual unification and increased military excursions into the Taiwan Strait.

Biden has been in the shadow of Russia’s war on Ukraine

,

said on several occasions that the US would provide military aid to Taiwan if China attacked, through the White House

later

amended that official US policy had not changed. Yet China has accused the US of subversion

what is known as

are

one-china policy,

“

One China” policy

recognizing, but not endorsing, Beijing’s position that Taiwan is part of China.

Such ambiguity has helped keep the peace in the Taiwan Strait for decades, but the delicate balance has become tenuous, highlighted by several recent near misses between US and Chinese military ships and fighter jets around Taiwan.

“China will treat Taiwan as a bottom-line, hard-core problem and may be implicit [that] we cannot compromise on this issue, said Alfred Wu, an associate professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore.

The Biden administration has also tried the

enormous

penetration that China has made in many parts of the world, including in the Western Hemisphere, through its multi

–

trillion dollar, 10 year old Belt and Road infrastructure project.

“We have strengthened America’s ability to trump China,” said Kurt Campbell, U.S. presidential coordinator for Indo-Pacific affairs, by building the U.S. economy, better protecting U.S. technology, “and critically through our deepen relationships with allies and partners around the world.”

But the US is catching up. In recent weeks, China has increased its influence over a traditionally Russian atmosphere in Central Asia by bringing together Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan at a summit. And Blinken’s arrival in Beijing was preceded by the visits of the presidents of Honduras and the Palestinian Authority.

Beijing condemns what it sees as US efforts to contain China’s rise. Aside from its frustration with US moves to strengthen ties with Taiwan, China has criticized a defense pact the US has made with the UK and Australia known as AUKUS, as well as its informal cooperation with the Quad, which

includes includes

the US, Japan, India and Australia.

Beijing is also outraged by the growing list of Chinese companies that are on trade blacklists for using US technology. Initiatives to prevent Chinese companies from accessing sensitive US technology exports have thwarted China’s attempts to become self-sufficient in areas such as semiconductor manufacturing and artificial intelligence.

Without agreement on the fundamental order of their place in the world, there is a temptation to turn every aspect of their relationships into a battleground for performative one-upmanship, said Wen-ti Sung, a political scientist with the Australian’s Taiwan Studies Program. National University.

As much as the Biden administration emphasizes strengthening alliances to counterbalance China, this is happening in a changing world order. It’s no longer just West

in return for

versus East; it is not complete

N

or exclusive relationship. Many countries in the region do not want to be forced to choose between Washington and Beijing, preferring to work with both depending on their own interests, analysts say.

That message had been publicly delivered to Blinking hours earlier

hi on board

his flight to Beijing, when he held a press conference in Washington with the visiting foreign minister of Singapore,

Vivian Balakrishnan.

As the world transitions into a multipolar world, now more than ever

,

we need a rules-based, multilateral system with fit-for-purpose institutions and processes, updated where necessary,” said Balakrishnan. “This requires the United States and China to achieve a modus vivendi.

“This is a very important and critical moment,”

Hi

added: “not just for the United States and China, but indeed for the rest of the world, [which] will look.”

Wilkinson reports from Washington and Yang from Taipei. Special Correspondent David Shen contributed from Taipei.