A bit of 'progress' but more 'wait and see'
Chinese President Xi Jinping meets with visiting U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Beijing on June 19 (XINHUA)
When Chinese President Xi Jinping met his U.S. counterpart Joe Biden on the sidelines of last year's Group of 20 meeting, there was a moment of cautious optimism. Both sides signaled a desire to take constructive steps forward to help mend and stabilize ties. Both committed to moving ahead with a number of high-level meetings, including a planned visit by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Indeed, after former U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's provocative and destabilizing visit to China's Taiwan region, on top of nearly two years of Biden mounting efforts to encircle and suppress China with yet more containment policies, many believed the Xi-Biden meeting indicated China-U.S. relations had reached a critical and much needed turning point. They were wrong.
Before assessing Blinken's recent visit to Beijing on June 18-19, let's recount in part some of what's happened since the presidents met. The U.S. expanded its forces in the Philippines. It moved nuclear capable bombers to Australia on top of selling Canberra nuclear-powered submarines via AUKUS, the trilateral security partnership between Australia, the UK and the U.S. It exploited an errant weather balloon and used it to induce anti-China hysteria in the U.S. and beyond, which Biden then used as a key talking point in his State of the Union speech and to torpedo Blinken's first planned China visit. U.S. officials then repeated the balloon lie in Brussels, along with false allegations that Beijing was supplying military assistance to Russia against Ukraine, to argue China posed a direct security risk to both the U.S. and Europe and thus, NATO's remit should be expanded to confront it. NATO has since opened an office in Japan, while the U.S. continues to encourage a new military bloc with Tokyo and others in the Pacific, and indeed, is encouraging Japan to advance an offense-capable military.
In the meantime, the U.S. continued to pressure China over the Taiwan question. New House Speaker Kevin McCarthy met Taiwan's leader Tsai Ing-wen in California, and the U.S. military increased dangerous close encounters with Chinese ships and aircraft around Taiwan and in the South China Sea. Washington has restarted the Cold War practice of having its nuclear missile submarines visiting the Republic of Korea, and pressed ahead with its aggressive efforts to kneecap China's economy and hi-tech development with its CHIPS Act, strongarming those who depend on America for security and economic wellbeing to follow suit. Further, at the end of the Group of Seven meeting in Hiroshima in May, consensus was reached that de-risking, not decoupling, was the goal, but the former is arguably more dangerous than the latter because it seems practical and still moves in the same direction as decoupling. Along the way, other high-level meetings established a pattern of being disingenuous, with American officials grandstanding and talking past their Chinese counterparts, repeating repeatedly debunked lies on debt traps, Chinese spying, Chinese tech threats and so on.
When China's Defense Minister attended the recent Shangri-la Dialogue in Singapore, he refused a formal meeting with his American counterpart. Washington spun this as evidence that China did not want vital military-to-military ties to improve communication and ensure problems like dangerous encounters were well-managed. In fact, there was no cold shoulder. There was a cordial greeting and a shaking of hands, but a formal meeting was rejected due to spurious Trump-era sanctions against the Chinese Defense Minister that Biden could easily rescind but has thus far kept in place. China's position is meetings shall proceed on the basis of mutual recognition and respect, which is categorically the opposite of being blacklisted. Furthermore, there are concerns the U.S. wants to use such communications to actually facilitate aggressive encounters, to continue them but manage them before they spiral out of control. Understandably, Beijing is not interested.
Blinken finally arrives
When Blinken finally arrived in Beijing, more than half a year after Biden committed to the same, many around the world but especially in Asia breathed a collective sigh of relief. This sigh was hard earned. Indeed, given the false allegations published recently in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) regarding a major Chinese spy base in Cuba, there were concerns that yet another balloon brouhaha was being fabricated to once again derail a Blinken visit. And while the Pentagon quickly disputed the WSJ story, it was still uncertain that Blinken would arrive, and if he did, that he would actually be diplomatic. For this reason, official decisions regarding who he would meet, above all whether he'd meet President Xi, were reserved.
In fact, Blinken arrived in diplomatic mode, which was remarkable due to its rarity and the aforenoted contexts. His meetings with Foreign Minister Qin Gang and Wang Yi, Director of the Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, went well, and the meeting with President Xi went forward. Along the way Blinken hit most of the right talking points, acknowledging the relationship was unstable and needed rectification, that America stands by commitments made previously by Biden to Xi, that Washington is not seeking a new cold war, that it does not seek to change China's political system, that its military alliances are not directed at China, that it does not support Taiwan independence, and that it does not seek conflict with China. Instead, he said the U.S. looks forwarding to having more high-level engagement, keeping lines of communication open, better managing differences, promoting more exchanges, and so on.
Both sides have since hailed the meeting as candid, respectful, and offering both progress and an opportunity to move forward in positive ways. With low expectations and no significant breakthroughs expected, word that both sides would resume cooperating over fentanyl controls was a small but important indicator of more to come. Indeed, the U.S. side seems hopeful more meetings will take place this summer, perhaps with its Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and Special Envoy for Climate John Kerry meeting their Chinese counterparts to work on areas where cooperation and mutual interest are clear. That said, Beijing's next-day assessment is that China will need to wait and see whether the U.S. will convert positive statements into actions.
If the U.S. is really keen to stabilize the relationship, then fewer provocations toward China over Taiwan, fewer close encounters in the Taiwan Straits and South China Sea, as well as dropping the spurious sanctions against the Chinese Defense Minister and taking sensible actions on tariffs from America's long running trade war are the sorts of concrete next steps that need to be taken. The problem has not been so much what Washington says but what it actually does. Consequently, if we do see positive steps in the next few months, and indeed, steps that aren't purchased through additional aggressions, then we'll have good reason to believe real stability and improved security is possible.
In the meantime, anti-China hawks in America are already on the move, attacking Blinken and Biden for selling out to China. We should expect much more of this to come given the extent to which both Democrats and Republicans have politicized China-U.S. relations among highly polarized voters. As Biden runs for a second term, will he have the courage to improve relations or will he succumb to baser political instincts? Given his striking commitment thus far to encircling and suppressing China, perhaps he's a devout Cold Warrior, the legacy of a different era, which his generation still believes signifies one of America's greatest victories. Hopefully Washington actually understands that one can't travel backward through time, and will instead chart a more responsible course forward. But as Beijing surely knows, wait and see is not the same as holding one's breath.
来源｜6月29日北京周报客户端
编辑｜卢昱舟 全红