The tempo of U.S.–China diplomacy has picked up in recent weeks.
Two senior State Department officials took part in the Chinese embassy’s celebration of the founding of the country’s government this week, amid an intense diplomatic push to secure a sit-down meeting between President Biden and Chairman Xi in the U.S. this year.
The People’s Republic of China is the official government of the ruling Chinese Communist Party, and the anniversary of its founding falls on October 1.
The Chinese embassy in Washington held its event to mark PRC national day, its first in person since the Covid pandemic, on Wednesday.
In a picture from the gathering that Chinese ambassador Xie Feng posted to Twitter, two senior State Department officials, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs Daniel Kritenbrink and principal deputy assistant secretary Kin Moy, stood next to him in the front row of an audience.
“I’d like to extend my heartfelt thanks to friends from various communities for your longstanding support for China and China-US relations, and also warmest festival greetings to our fellow compatriots in China and the United States!” Xie wrote.
The participation of Kritenbrink and Moy in this week’s Chinese embassy event is noteworthy because it follows recent Justice Department court filings implicating China’s diplomatic missions in America in espionage and harassment operations in the U.S., as well as recent intimidation campaigns by the Chinese embassy targeting Congress.
The State Department did not answer National Review’s questions about the State Department officials’ attendance of the Wednesday gathering.
The department again marked the PRC’s national day today, as Secretary of State Antony Blinken released a statement congratulating “the people of the People’s Republic of China” on their national day.
“As the United States continues to work with the international community to solve the world’s most serious challenges, we welcome the cooperation of the People’s Republic of China in addressing shared challenges, including the climate crisis, public health, counter-narcotics, food security, and global macroeconomic stability,” Blinken said.
Blinken’s statement emphasizing areas of cooperation with China followed a new State Department report that accused Beijing of engaging in a worldwide, multibillion-dollar propaganda and censorship campaign to shape global events to its advantage.
Kritenbrink has taken the lead on the department’s drive to repair the high-level diplomatic relationship with China in the wake of the spy-balloon incident. He traveled to Beijing in June ahead of a series of visits by U.S. cabinet officials for talks with Chinese officials this summer, prompting criticism from members of Congress who slammed the timing of the trip, which started on June 4, the anniversary of the 1989 massacre at Tiananmen Square.
Foggy Bottom reportedly offered concessions ahead of the visits by the senior Biden administration officials. Reuters reported in May that the State Department held back new measures targeting Huawei and Chinese officials implicated in the Uyghur genocide as it sought high-level contact with Beijing, which was then refusing to set up meetings with U.S. officials.
U.S. officials are hoping that Xi will attend the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit in San Francisco this November and meet Biden for a sit-down meeting there. Beijing has tried to eke more policy concessions out of Washington as a precondition for the meeting, with the Ministry of State Security spy agency saying in a post to Chinese social media this month that America must demonstrate more “sincerity.”
In recent weeks, the tempo of U.S.–China diplomacy has picked up. Last Friday, the Pentagon quietly revealed that it had revived a dialogue with China regarding its cybersecurity strategy, and the Treasury Department announced that the U.S. and China have created two new working groups to address economic and financial issues.
The day after the Chinese embassy event, Kritenbrink met with Chinese vice foreign minister for Asia Sun Weidong at the State Department. Sun also met with acting deputy secretary of state Victoria Nuland that day.
Sun’s visit to Washington followed meetings between national-security adviser Jake Sullivan and Wang Yi, the CCP’s top diplomat in Malta and between Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Chinese vice president Han Zheng in New York on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly.