WASHINGTON, 25 July 2021, (TON): Deputy Secretary Sherman is going to be traveling to Tianjin for discussions with the Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Vice Foreign Minister Xie Feng, Senior Administration official of the State Department has said.

The deputy secretary’s travel to China follows a week of important engagements with allies and partners in Japan, we were in Seoul a little bit earlier, and right now we’re in Mongolia.

The deputy secretary used her meetings there to underscore the United States commitment to standing shoulder to shoulder with our allies and partners to address pressing global challenges, advance a free and open Indo-Pacific, and uphold and strengthen the rules-based international order.

We’ve said we are prepared to engage Chinese officials when we believe those engagements will be substantive and constructive. Those are the terms on which we agreed to this visit.

So Deputy Secretary Sherman’s meetings are a continuation of the discussions we had in Anchorage in March around setting the terms for the relationship and achieving a steady state of affairs between our countries. 

We believe it’s important to maintain open lines of communication between high-level officials.  Frank and open discussion, even – perhaps especially – where we disagree, is critical to reducing the potential for misunderstandings between our countries, maintaining global peace and security, and making progress on important issues.

As Secretary Blinken has said, “the U.S. relationship with China will be collaborative where it can be, competitive where it should be, and adversarial where it must be.  And we expect all dimensions of the relationship will be on the table for discussion during Wendy’s meetings.  You know as well as I do she’s a seasoned diplomat. 

We’re going into these meetings with our eyes wide open.  The deputy secretary is going to represent the U.S. interests and values and those of our allies and partners.  We’re going to do it honestly and directly.  In Tianjin, she’s going to make clear while we welcome stiff and sustained competition with the PRC, everyone needs to play by the same rules and on the level – on a level playing field.