U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken attends a gathering with China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Nusa Dua on the Indonesian resort island of Bali, July 9, 2022.
Stefani Reynolds | AP
Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Saturday met with a senior Chinese diplomat at a conference in Munich, a State Department spokesperson said.
Blinken and Wang Yi, director of the People’s Republic of China CCP Central Foreign Affairs office, met on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference, which each are attending, the spokesperson said.
Blinken didn’t reply to questions from reporters later Saturday.
Diplomatic tensions between the U.S. and China have risen because the shooting down of the alleged Chinese spy balloon, which China has insisted was not intended for spying.
The U.S. and China exchanged strong words after the ballon was downed off the coast of South Carolina on Feb. 4, with China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs expressing in an announcement its “strong dissatisfaction and protest over the usage of force” by the U.S.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said afterward that the balloon was getting used by the People’s Republic of China “in an try to surveil strategic sites within the continental United States.”
After China condemned the U.S. decision to shoot the balloon out of the sky, President Joe Biden said in an interview with NBC News Thursday that he plans to talk along with his Chinese President Xi Jinping but didn’t say when, adding, “I feel the very last thing that Xi wants is to fundamentally rip the connection with the US and with me.”
Earlier Thursday, Biden delivered his first remarks in regards to the Chinese balloon and three unidentified objects flying above North America that were downed by the U.S. military. One was shot down Feb. 10 over Alaska, one other was shot down Feb. 11 over Canada, and a 3rd was shot down over Lake Huron on Feb. 12.
“I gave the order to take down these three objects resulting from hazards to civilian industrial air traffic and since we couldn’t rule out the surveillance risk of sensitive facilities,” he said in his remarks from the White House. “Make no mistake, if any object presents a threat to the protection and security of the American people, I’ll take it down.”
Biden said that the U.S. still doesn’t know what the three other objects over North America, which were also shot down by the military this week, were. But he suggested that the U.S. intelligence community believes they did not have nefarious purposes.
“We’re not on the lookout for a latest Cold War, but I make no apologies,” Biden said. “I make no apologies, and we’ll compete and we’ll responsibly manage that competition in order that it doesn’t veer into conflict.”
U.S. Northern Command said Friday it advisable an end to the seek for debris from two objects shot down in United States airspace this month.
Earlier this month, Blinken postponed a visit to Beijing after the balloon was spotted over the U.S. “We’ve concluded that the conditions should not right at this moment for Secretary Blinken to travel to China,” a senior State Department official said.