Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s trip to Beijing marked an “important start,” he said, noting that the spy balloon incident that postponed his trip should be considered “closed.”
Blinken spent two days in Beijing meeting with high-ranking Chinese leaders, including President Xi Jinping, during his highly anticipated diplomatic trip as relations between China and the United States have soured.
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His trip, initially scheduled for February, was postponed after the U.S. discovered a Chinese surveillance balloon hovering over sensitive military sites as it moved across the continental U.S.
“That chapter should be closed,” Blinken told NBC News.
President Joe Biden said he didn’t believe senior leaders in Beijing were aware of the spy balloon before it made international headlines.
“I think one of the things that balloon caused, not so much that it got shot down, but I don’t think leadership knew where it was and knew what was in it and knew what was going on,” Biden told reporters on Saturday. “I think it was more embarrassing than it was intentional.”
The U.S. military shot the balloon down once it reached the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of the Carolinas. Authorities worked to recover the debris from the balloon, which they did, though the FBI has not publicly disclosed any conclusions from its investigation.
Chinese military leaders began giving their U.S. counterparts the silent treatment following the incident, which Beijing maintained was a weather balloon that strayed off course, despite repeated warnings from the U.S. that such silence would increase the likelihood of escalation or miscalculations between the two countries. Beijing refused to establish a crisis communications challenge with the U.S. military officials, Blinken said, despite U.S. warnings that their silence raises the possibility of “an unintentional conflict” between the powers.
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“That’s the quickest path to an inadvertent conflict,” said Blinken, who added that restoring these lines of communication was “not something we’re going to drop.”
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and his Chinese counterpart, Minister of National Defense Li Shangfu, briefly spoke at the Shangri-La Summit earlier this month. Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder said the two leaders "shook hands but did not have a substantive exchange," while the Chinese declined a U.S. invitation for a meeting between Li and Austin.