China’s Foreign Minister Is Headed to Washington

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi is expected to visit Washington later this month in a bid to manage increasingly frosty relations and pave the way for a highly anticipated but still unscheduled meeting between U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping, according to three U.S. and East Asian diplomats familiar with the matter.

Wang’s planned visit caps off a monthslong series of high-level visits by Biden administration officials to Beijing as the two countries work to ease escalating tensions in their relationship amid clashes over trade, technology, military issues, and human rights. Officials in Washington expect Xi to visit San Francisco for an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit and meet with Biden on the sidelines, though no formal meeting plans have been announced.

Wang’s visit, if confirmed, would mark the latest effort to stabilize ties between the two countries and hash out an agenda for the Biden-Xi meeting.

In recent months, top U.S. officials have traveled to China in an effort to maintain communication, including U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo. Several U.S. senators, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, are also expected to follow suit with their own trips to the country, even amid growing pressure in Washington for lawmakers to take a harder line toward Beijing. Wang’s visit, if it comes to bear, would be the first fruit to fall off that tree.

“Face-to-face diplomacy is the best way to deal with areas where we disagree, and also the best way to explore areas of potential cooperation between us,” Blinken said last month. “The world expects us to responsibly manage our relationship. The United States is committed to doing just that.” 

The Biden administration has the luxury of outreach, but there are tendrils of discontent in Congress and in Washington more broadly about any olive branch to Beijing. The House of Representatives established a select committee to investigate everything from Beijing’s mass detention of Uyghurs to its tech ambitions and influence in American universities. Hawks on the Hill, and elsewhere, rail about a hypothetical Chinese invasion of Taiwan, which has gotten plenty of U.S. military aid of late. Facing these pressures, top Biden officials have stressed that Washington is looking to de-risk ties, not decouple entirely from Beijing.

“I don’t want to contain China,” Biden said last month. “I just want to make sure we have a relationship with China that is on the up and up, squared away—everybody knows what it’s all about.”