China blames US for deadlock in relations as talks begin | China News

US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman is in China’s Tianjin to discuss the fraught ties between the two superpowers.

China has blamed the United States for what it called a “stalemate” in bilateral relations as high-level face-to-face talks began in the Chinese city of Tianjin.

In a meeting with US’s No 2 diplomat on Monday, China’s Vice Foreign Minister Xie Feng urged Washington “to change its highly misguided mindset and dangerous policy,” according to the official Xinhua News Agency.

Ties between China and the US is at a standstill because some Americans portray China as an “imagined enemy,” Xinhua quoted Xie as telling US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman.

“The hope may be that by demonising China, the US could somehow… blame China for its own structural problems,” Xie said.

Sherman arrived in Tianjin on Sunday for talks with Xie and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. She is the highest-ranking US official to visit China since President Joe Biden took office six months ago.

Relations between the countries deteriorated sharply under his predecessor, Donald Trump, and the two sides remain at odds over a host of issues including human rights, Hong Kong, Xinjiang, technology and a number of other issues.

“The good news is the two sides are sitting down to talk. But the fractious relationship cannot be denied. Ties are fraught, they are in a freefall,” said Al Jazeera’s Adrian Brown, reporting from Hong Kong.

“What Wendy Sherman has to do is to try and see if there’s a way that the relationship can be managed better. Also, a few months from now, The G20 summit will be held in Rome and it is impossible to imagine that President Joe Biden and President Xi Jinping would not sit down in such a setting and talk. So these current talks are in a way aimed at paving the way for that meeting.”

Senior US officials have said the goal of the talks is not to negotiate specific issues but to keep high-level communications channels open. The US wants to ensure that guardrails are in place to prevent competition between the countries from becoming conflict, they said.

A day before Sherman’s arrival, Wang had said China would not accept the US taking a “superior” position in the relationship.

“China would never accept any country that claims to be superior to others,” he told China’s Phoenix Television. “If the US has not learned to treat other countries equally, China and the international community have the responsibility to help the US learn how to do this.”

Sherman, who arrived Sunday evening from Mongolia, tweeted “heartfelt condolences (from the United States) to those who have lost loved ones” in severe storms and flooding last week that killed at least 63 people in Henan province.

Her meetings follow an initial and highly contentious meeting in March in Anchorage, Alaska, where Wang and veteran Chinese diplomat Yang Jiechi flew to meet US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan.

John Kerry, the Biden administration’s special climate envoy, traveled to Shanghai for meetings with his Chinese counterpart in April.