Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty/Reuters
U.S. Secretary of State Tony Blinken is slated to arrive in China on Sunday for a long-awaited trip that has been postponed for months over spiking tensions between Washington and Beijing. But current signs from both capitals suggest that the Biden administration might not be able to walk away with a “win” anytime soon.
Blinken’s original trip was called off in February days after the Chinese government flew a spy balloon over the United States, an incident which sent U.S.-China relations into a tailspin.
Officials from the Biden administration and from Chinese President Xi Jinping’s administration have been hosting a flurry of meetings since then trying to patch things up. And although the trip is back on, Biden administration officials have already been working to temper expectations about what the United States might be able to get out of it, as a whole slew of other issues have threatened to send the relationship into further freefall in recent days.