Blinken reschedules trip to China for this week after postponing for months over spy balloon

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Antony Blinken volition question to Beijing this week to conscionable with elder Chinese officials, the State Department announced connected Wednesday.

The sojourn was primitively slated for earlier this twelvemonth but postponed aft a reconnaissance balloon linked to China was discovered lingering implicit U.S. airspace.

The apical U.S. diplomat volition "raise bilateral issues of concern, planetary and determination matters, and imaginable practice connected shared transnational challenges," State Department spokesperson Matt Miller said successful a connection announcing the trip.

After Beijing, Blinken volition past question to London to conscionable with his counterparts from the U.K. and Ukraine. He volition besides conscionable with a fig of allies connected the sidelines of the Ukraine Recovery Conference. Blinken is expected to galvanize allies and the backstage assemblage to enactment Ukraine's reconstruction efforts.

The travel follows an overnight telephone betwixt Blinken and China's State Councilor and Foreign Minister Qin Gang.

During the call, Blinken and Qin discussed maintaining unfastened lines of connection betwixt Washington and Beijing successful bid to "avoid miscalculation and conflict," according to a readout of the treatment released by the State Department.

Tensions betwixt Beijing and Washington person intensified implicit China's territorial enlargement successful the South China Sea, aggression toward Taiwan, allegations of espionage and quality rights abuses.

Last month, Biden's nationalist information advisor Jake Sullivan and China's apical diplomat Wang Yi met successful Vienna to sermon a scope of topics, including Russia's warfare successful Ukraine, arsenic tensions betwixt the world's 2 largest economies simmer.

The White House described the gathering arsenic "candid, substantive and constructive."

A elder Biden medication official, who spoke connected the information of anonymity per crushed rules established by the White House, said the 2 spoke a small implicit 8 hours implicit the people of 2 days.

The authoritative said Sullivan reiterated U.S. concerns astir China's alignment with Russia and the anticipation that the world's second-largest system could assistance Moscow blunt sanctions.

Washington and its allies person imposed respective rounds of coordinated sanctions for Moscow's war, vaulting Russia past Iran and North Korea arsenic the world's most-sanctioned country.

So far, the White House has said that it has not seen Beijing supply assistance to the Kremlin's warfare effort.