US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will visit China this weekend for the first time since taking office, the State Department announced on Wednesday.
Blinken will travel to Beijing from June 18 to 19 for talks with senior Chinese officials, including Foreign Minister Wang Yi and President Xi Jinping, on a range of bilateral, regional, and global issues, the department said in a statement.
Blinken will be the first US secretary of state to visit China since October 2018 when his predecessor Mike Pompeo made a brief stop following talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Pyongyang.
Since then, however, there have been some signs of diplomatic engagement and cooperation between Washington and Beijing on areas of common interests.