U.S. says Chinese foreign minister visit to Washington is 'milestone'

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi's three-day visit to Washington marks "another milestone" in efforts to ensure badly-tattered bilateral relations do not deteriorate further, the White House said Thursday.

Wang is due in the U.S. for talks with Secretary of State Antony Blinken Thursday afternoon before heading to the White House on Friday to meet with National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan. National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said Sullivan "is looking forward" to the upcoming discussion.

"It's a chance to continue the conversation that Jake himself has had with our PRC counterparts now for many many months. It's another milestone in that effort to keep the lines of communication open with the PRC," Kirby said, referring to China by its formal acronym.

"It'll be an opportunity for Mr. Sullivan to obviously address areas of concern that we continue to have with some of some of the PRC behavior, particularly in the South China Sea. But it'll also be an opportunity to explore ways in which we can continue to keep these channels open, and to try to get open the military-to-military channel communication, which is still closed," he added.

The visit will mark the first to the U.S. by a Chinese foreign minister in years after relations between the world's two largest economies sharply deteriorated when the Trump administration imposed a range of trade penalties on China, setting off an escalating trade war that continues to this day.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken's trip to China this summer marked the first visit of a top American diplomat to Beijing since 2019. Since Blinken's sit-down, several top U.S. officials, including Sullivan and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, have met with senior Chinese officials.