UPDATE - Top US diplomat invites Chinese counterpart to Washington

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By Alperen Aktas

ISTANBUL (AA) – US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Sunday invited his Chinese counterpart to Washington for an official trip as Beijing said the bilateral relations were at their "lowest" since the two countries established diplomatic relations in the 1970s.

Antony Blinken landed in Beijing for the high-stakes official trip, the first since 2018 by any US top diplomat.

He held bilateral talks with Qin Gang for around six hours.

Blinken said on Twitter that he discussed with Qin how the two sides "can responsibly manage the relationship between our two countries through open channels of communication."

Blinken will continue his engagement with Chinese officials on Monday, the US State Department said.

US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller called the meeting "candid, substantive and constructive."

Blinken invited Qin for a reciprocal visit to the US, Miller said. However Qin pointed out that “the China-US relationship is at the lowest point since its establishment."

"This does not serve the fundamental interests of the two peoples or meet the shared expectations of the international community,” said Hua Chunying, the spokeswoman for China’s Foreign Ministry.

Qin also said that the relationship is fundamentally based on the principles of mutual respect, peaceful coexistence, and win-win cooperation put forward by Chinese President Xi Jinping.

He pointed out that the Taiwan issue is the core of China's interests, "the most important issue in the relations, and the most prominent risk."

With the strategic rivalry between the two sides heating up, Beijing severed military-to-military communication channels with Washington after then-House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan last August.

Blinken's Beijing trip, which was agreed upon by Biden and Xi last November during a meeting in Indonesia, had been abruptly postponed in February after a suspected Chinese spy balloon was detected flying across the US.

According to Hua, the two sides "agreed to encourage more people-to-people and educational exchanges, and had positive discussions on increasing passenger flights between the two countries."

The two sides also agreed to support more mutual visits by students, scholars and business people, Hua said.

*Anadolu staff contributed to the story from Ankara​​​​​​​