FirstFT: Xi sees ‘progress’ in US-China relationship

Good morning. President Xi Jinping declared that the US and China have made “progress” in stabilising bilateral relations following his long-delayed meeting with US secretary of state Antony Blinken yesterday.

Xi’s comments are the strongest signal yet that Beijing is willing to consider a truce in its acrimonious relationship with Washington. Speaking in the Great Hall of the People with Blinken, the first US secretary of state to visit the Chinese capital since 2018, Xi said that whether China and the US could get along had a “bearing on the future and destiny of mankind”.

“The two countries should properly handle Sino-US relations with an attitude of being responsible to history, the people and the world,” Xi said. In extensive talks between senior Chinese officials and Blinken during his visit, “the two sides . . . made progress and reached agreement on some specific issues”, he added.

Blinken told journalists after the meeting he agreed that both countries “have an obligation to manage this relationship responsibly”.

“It was clear coming in that the relationship was at a point of instability and both sides recognised the need to work to stabilise it,” Blinken said. This meant establishing “better lines of communication” to ensure “competition doesn’t veer into conflict”.

Blinken’s scheduled trip to Beijing earlier this year was postponed after an alleged Chinese spy balloon flew over sensitive military sites in the US before it was shot down in February. As recently as Sunday, it was unclear if Blinken would meet Xi during his trip to China this week.

John Delury, a China expert at Yonsei University in Seoul, said the lack of substance in Blinken’s talks while in Beijing was a measure of the deterioration of the relationship.

Here’s what else I’m keeping tabs on:

• People’s Bank of China: The central bank is expected to cut its benchmark loan prime interest rates to boost the economy.

• China-Germany meeting: Chinese premier Li Qiang and other officials will arrive in Berlin for the first face-to-face summit between the nations since 2018.

• World Refugee Day: More than 40 companies including Amazon, Hilton and Starbucks, announced they would collectively hire more than 13,000 refugees.

Five more top stories

1. Crypto.com deploys internal teams to trade tokens for profit, the latest sign of potential conflicts of interest in the digital assets industry. In most sectors, market making and proprietary trading are usually conducted by separate private companies, but the Singapore-based group, a top-10 crypto marketplace, operates both. Read the full story.

2. Airbus has secured the biggest aircraft order in history after sealing a multibillion-dollar deal to sell 500 narrow-body planes to India’s IndiGo.
“No one has ever [placed] an order of this magnitude,” said Pieter Elbers, chief executive of IndiGo. FT reporters explain what made the massive deal possible.

3. Billionaire executive Hamish Harding is aboard a submersible vessel that has disappeared while on an expedition to view the wreckage of the RMS Titanic. The vessel, operated by OceanGate Expeditions, was diving to view the remains of the passenger liner. Here’s what we know about the ongoing situation.

4. Israeli forces killed at least five Palestinians and wounded 91 more in a gun battle with militants that erupted during a raid in the occupied West Bank, said Palestinian officials. The fighting is the latest incident in a sustained escalation in violence that has gripped the territory.

5. BlackRock and JPMorgan Chase are helping the Ukrainian government set up a reconstruction bank to steer public seed capital into rebuilding projects that can attract hundreds of billions of dollars in private investment. The fund is not expected to fully launch until the end of hostilities with Russia, but investors will get a preview this week.

The Big Read

Xi Jinping has swiftly advanced a new group of political leaders with a shared background: deep experience in China’s military-industrial complex. Their rise to the top echelons of power is part of the president’s efforts to reinvigorate the country’s long-running project of “military-civil fusion”. These are some of Xi’s rising stars.

We’re also reading . . . 

Chart of the day

Assets invested in global exchange traded funds have hit a record of $10.32tn off the back of rallying stock markets and resilient inflows, exceeding a peak at the end of 2021 before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and a global surge in inflation.

Take a break from the news

New York City has the highest number of Michelin-starred Japanese restaurants outside Japan. In FT Globetrotter, Nikkei’s Tamami Shimizuishi reveals her tried and tested favourites for authentic Japanese cuisine.

Additional contributions by Gordon Smith and Tee Zhuo