Biden aides to hold first talks with China, press concerns

In a sign of Biden's strategy to rally allies in the face of China, Blinken will first jointly travel to Japan and South Korea with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who separately will head onward to India.
Blinken will then join Biden's national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, in talks in Anchorage on March 18 with their Chinese counterparts Wang Yi and Yang Jiechi.

"This is an important opportunity for us to lay out in very frank terms many concerns that we have with Beijing's actions and behavior that are challenging the security, prosperity, the values of the United States and our partners and allies," Blinken told the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

He said he would also look for areas of cooperation with Beijing but did not intend follow-up meetings.

"Those engagements, if they are to follow, really have to be based on the proposition that we're seeing tangible progress and tangible outcomes on the issues of concern to us with China," Blinken said.
In a flurry of diplomacy, Biden will also Friday hold a three-way virtual summit with the prime ministers of Australia, India and Japan -- nations deeply suspicious of China's growing influence.

Biden and Blinken have both already spoken by telephone with Chinese leaders, with Biden saying he pressed President Xi Jinping on human rights, trade and its regional assertiveness in an unusually long two-hour call last month.

The Alaska talks will be the first between the Pacific powers since Yang met Blinken's hawkish predecessor Mike Pompeo in June in Hawaii -- a setting similarly chosen to be away from the high-stakes glare of national capitals.

The Biden administration has generally backed the tougher approach to China initiated by former president Donald Trump but insisted that it can be more effective by shoring up alliances and seeking narrow ways to cooperate on priorities such as climate change.

In a speech last week, Blinken called China "the biggest geopolitical test of the 21st century" as it alone can "seriously challenge the stable and open international system."