MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 16th July, 2021) The United States has halted a planned visit of Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman to China after Beijing refused to grant a meeting with her counterpart, Le Yucheng, the Financial Times newspaper reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
The South China Morning Post newspaper reported earlier in July, citing a source, that the senior US official was set to travel to the northeastern city of Tianjin next week in the first step towards a potential US-China summit. While Washington announced on Thursday Sherman's visit to Japan, South Korea and Mongolia, it did not mention the trip to China.
The Financial Times has learned that China instead offered to hold a meeting with Xie Feng, the number five foreign ministry official responsible for US affairs, as well as suggesting that Sherman could also hold a virtual meeting with Foreign Minister Wang Yi during her visit to Tianjin.
A senior State Department official told the newspaper that Washington would continue to "explore opportunities" to hold negotiations with Chinese officials.
The visit, if it pans out, would mark the first top-level engagement between the two countries since the meeting of senior American and Chinese officials in Alaska in March that erupted into a public spat between US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, and Chinese Director of the Office of the Central Commission for Foreign Affairs, Yang Jiechi.
The fresh diplomatic dispute follows a similar stand-off between the two countries' military departments. In May, the South China Morning Post reported, citing military sources, that Beijing had refused to receive a phonecall from US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, who requested to talk not with his Chinese counterpart, Wei Fenghe, but with a higher-ranking official, in violation of diplomatic protocol. Austin, in particular, sought to speak with Chinese Central Military Commission (CMC) Vice-Chairman Xu Qiliang, which offended the Chinese Defense Ministry.
