Why is US Secretary of State Antony Blinken going to China?

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is due to visit China on Sunday as Beijing and Washington attempt to move forward with rapprochement after a particularly tense year.Blinken was originally slated to visit China in February but his trip was delayed after the United States shot down a so-called “Chinese spy balloon” found flying over US territory and said to be gathering intelligence on domestic military sites.Blinken is the most senior US official to visit China since 2019 and the first secretary of state since Mike Pompeo’s trip in 2018 amid then-President Donald Trump’s trade war with Beijing. Blinken is expected to meet with Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang or top diplomat Wang Yi.

It is unclear if he will meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping as Pompeo did in June 2018, but it would be noteworthy as Xi is due to meet Microsoft founder Bill Gates in Beijing on Friday.

The main focus of Blinken’s trip will be re-establishing “communication channels” to “address misperceptions and prevent miscalculation”, while also ensuring that competition between the rival superpowers does not devolve into “conflict”, according to Daniel Kritenbrink, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs.

These are likely not empty talking points from the US State Department.Last month, a Chinese fighter jet nearly collided with a US surveillance plane flying over international air space in the South China Sea, with the US Pacific Command claiming that the Chinese pilot had manoeuvred in an “unnecessarily aggressive manner”.Washington and Beijing may now be ready for a thaw, said Ryan Hass, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, who described Blinken’s trip as the “first stage of an exploratory process” by the two sides to see whether they can improve their relationship.

“Neither President Biden nor President Xi benefits from a perception of runaway escalation in US-China relations. At the same time, neither want to be seen as softening their approach toward the other,” Hass told Al Jazeera.

“This is the space that both sides will be exploring during the visit. Is it possible to chart a path forward for the relationship that manages competition and maintains open channels of communication? We simply don’t yet know,” Hass said.“But this is why there are diplomats. To probe, test, explore non-hostile ways for managing hard challenges. Time will tell,” he said.

The visit follows recent engagements including a call between Blinken and Foreign Minister Qin and a meeting between top US and Chinese officials in Beijing. In May, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan met with senior Chinese diplomat Wang Yi in Vienna for “candid talks”.

Beijing, however, rejected a meeting between US and Chinese military officials at the Shangri-La security forum in Singapore last month apparently due to Biden declining to lift sanctions on China’s Minister of Defence Li Shangfu, that have been in place since 2018.