WASHINGTON—Secretary of State Antony Blinken is traveling to China this week to meet with Chinese communist leadership, the State Department has acknowledged.
Blinken will meet with senior Chinese officials during a series of meetings in Beijing on June 18 and 19. He will seek to reestablish regular communications between the two powers, a State Department announcement said.
The visit is part of a larger effort by the administration to erect guardrails around the two powers’ increasingly bitter competition, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said.
“Intense competition requires intense and tough diplomacy to ensure that competition does not veer into confrontation or conflict, and that’s what we intend for this visit,” Miller said during a June 14 press briefing….