WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Washington is not expecting a “long list of deliverables” when Secretary of State Antony Blinken visits China later this week, but hopes to keep high-level communication channels with Beijing open to reduce the risk that competition with Beijing veers into conflict, officials said on Wednesday.
Briefing reporters before Blinken’s departure on Friday, the top State Department official for Asia, Daniel Kritenbrink, said Washington hopes Blinken’s meetings with Chinese officials will “at a minimum, reduce the risk of miscalculation so that we do not veer into potential conflict.”
“There will be a substantive and productive agenda that we’ll have before us, but, again, the objective is to focus on those top line goals, not necessarily to produce a long list of deliverables,” he said.
(Reporting by Humeyra Pamuk, David Brunnstrom, Simon Lewis; Editing by Doina Chiacu)
