Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
China's top diplomat Wang Yi will travel to the United States later this week, senior Biden administration officials said on Monday, in a long-anticipated visit that comes amid soaring tensions in the Middle East, which U.S. officials hope Beijing can help contain.
Wang will visit Washington from Oct. 26-28 and meet with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and President Joe Biden's national security advisor Jake Sullivan, officials said, declining to say if he will meet with Biden as well.
The trip will be the highest-level in-person engagement ahead of an expected meeting between U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping in San Francisco in November. It is also the long-awaited reciprocal visit after several top U.S. officials including Blinken visited Beijing this summer.
Washington's top priority has been to ensure the intense competition between the world's two largest economies and that their disagreements over a host of issues from trade to Taiwan and the South China Sea do not veer into conflict.
"We continue to believe that direct face-to-face diplomacy is the best way to raise challenging issues, address misperception and miscommunication, and explore working with the Chinese where our interests intersect," said one official, who briefed reporters on the trip on condition of anonymity.
(Reuters)