WASHINGTON – The recent meetings between America’s top diplomat and China’s key figures, including President Xi Jinping, are encouraging but merely the first step in resolving the deep differences between the two superpowers, said Singapore’s Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan.
“This was an essential first step, but it is a long journey,” he told Singapore media on Tuesday, at the end of his week-long working visit to the United States.
The minister met Secretary of State Antony Blinken last Friday, the same day that Mr Blinken departed for his two-day trip to Beijing, where he met Mr Xi, top Chinese diplomat Wang Yi and Foreign Minister Qin Gang.
Dr Balakrishnan said American officials were cautiously optimistic that at least conversations between Washington and Beijing were taking place, as they viewed having open lines of communication as essential.
On Mr Xi’s meeting with Mr Blinken, he said: “I saw that as a positive sign that China feels it also agrees that it is important to establish these lines of communication, and that there is a basis for conversation.”
He added that more bilateral visits would also be good, saying he hoped to see more top officials meet their counterparts, for instance in the area of commerce or climate change.
“A steady cadence of interactions would be a positive sign,” he said.
Dr Balakrishnan told reporters that he had conveyed South-east Asia’s hopes for constructive, viable and peaceful engagement between the US and China.
“The more they engage, the more I think we can sleep a little bit more soundly,” he said.
However, there remains vast strategic differences and profound differences in perspective between the US and China, the minister noted.
Their relationship will depend on mutual respect, and both sides will have to work together to build up a reservoir of strategic trust in each other over time, he added.
“We hope these two dimensions – mutual respect and strategic trust – will slowly accumulate, and then issues can be resolved carefully,” he said.
“Some issues may even take generations to resolve. We must be able to live with that kind of ambiguity... but not let that distract us, or worse, divert us down pathways which will lead to miscalculations or escalations.”
