Blinken heads to Asia this week for a summit of regional leaders

WASHINGTON (AP) — Secretary of State Antony Blinken will make his 19th trip in office to Asia this week when he leads the U.S. delegation to a meeting of East Asian leaders in Laos.

The State Department said Tuesday that Blinken would fill in for President Joe Biden at the annual East Asia Summit, hosted by the chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

Blinken will travel to Laos’ capital, Vientiane, for meetings on Thursday and Friday before returning home. He had been due to join Biden in Germany and Angola over the weekend but the White House announced that the president was postponing his travel due to the severe hurricane weather in the U.S.

Frayed relations with China, particularly over Beijing's increasing assertiveness in the South China Sea regarding territorial disputes with its smaller neighbors, will be a major agenda item for Blinken, said Dan Kritenbrink, the top U.S. diplomat for Asia.

Blinken late last month met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York, but Kritenbrink could not say if Blinken plans to hold separate meetings in Laos with Chinese officials. China will be represented at the summit by Premier Li Qiang.

“A number of (China)-related issues are likely to come up in the context of the ASEAN meetings, including the situation in the South China Sea and China’s continuing to take a number of escalatory and irresponsible steps designed to coerce and pressure many in the South China Sea claimants,” Kritenbrink said.

“Our channels of communication with (China) remain open, and we’ll continue to focus, as we always have, on not just defending U.S. national interests and those of our allies, but also to managing responsibly our competition with China,” he said.