Secretary of State Antony Blinken told NBC News on Monday that his trip to Beijing marked an “important start” in stabilizing U.S. ties with China and that the countries should move on from the spy balloon incident that postponed his earlier visit, APA reports.
“That chapter should be closed,” Blinken said in an interview before leaving Beijing, where he spent two days meeting with senior Chinese officials including President Xi Jinping.
Stopping the downward spiral in relations between the world’s two largest economies “is not the product of one visit, even as intense and in some ways productive as this was,” Blinken said. “But it’s a good and I think important start.”
Blinken said the Biden administration, which ordered the balloon shot down by the military off the coast of South Carolina, had taken the necessary action at the time to protect U.S. interests and made its concerns clear to Beijing, which maintains it was an unmanned civilian airship that strayed off course.“We said what we needed to say and made clear what we needed to make clear in terms of this not happening again, and so long as it doesn’t that chapter should be closed,” Blinken said.
“But it’s something we’re very vigilant about and that we’ll continue to watch,” he added.
Source: Azeri-Press News Agency