“Mutual respect.”
That should be the basis of the bilateral relationship between the US and China, Xi Jinping told Antony Blinken on Monday in Beijing.
Blinken’s trip was delayed by several months. “When conditions permit, I plan to go to China,” he said in February, canceling his original plans after Joe Biden dispatched an F-22 to destroy a Chinese surveillance device caught drifting over the contiguous US. The reconnaissance balloon gave a new generation of Americans a taste of the Cold War. Its demise off the coast of South Carolina was an international spectacle, and came as an embarrassment to the Chinese. Beijing insisted the airship was a wayward weather balloon, not an instrument of a global spy program aimed at gathering intelligence on the military capabilities of other nations, as widely reported.
Notwithstanding an unmistakable air of farce, the balloon incident was considered a serious escalation by all the “good people on both sides,” as one former president might put it. Wang Yi, Xi’s irascible top diplomat, used an abrasive cameo at the Munich Security Conference to feign incredulity+. “The US disregarded the most basic facts and brazenly deployed advanced warplanes to shoot down a balloon — with missiles!” Wang exclaimed, calling the response “absurd and hysterical.” Two days later, he was in Moscow commiserating with Vladimir Putin and Sergei Lavrov.
The media on Monday dutifully parroted transcripts and official readouts from Blinken’s meeting with Xi. “Mr. Secretary, welcome to China,” Xi told Blinken, in the Great Hall of the People. “Generally speaking, the two sides have had candid discussions,” he said, referencing eight hours of what I can only imagine were tedious talks with new foreign minister Qin Gang and the aforementioned “Director Wang.” Qin will be coming to Washington soon, apparently.
“The two sides have made progress and reached agreement on some specific issues. This is very good,” Xi went on, speaking down to Blinken as a king does in his castle. “I hope, Mr. Secretary, you will make more positive contributions to stabilizing China-US relations.”
Blinken thanked Xi for “receiving” the US delegation, and described discussions with Qin and Wang as “candid and constructive.”
Allow me to politely cut through any optimistic soundbites you might’ve read Monday scattered across various media accounts of Blinken’s trip. Nothing of substance was accomplished here. The issues are existential. I’ll walk through a few of them.
The US is using a tangle of export and investment restrictions to impede China’s technological development. That’s not new, but Beijing is more wary of the effort now. Donald Trump’s approach was purely transactional. “I’ll lift these sanctions if you buy these farm goods.” “I kidnapped your CFO, but the good news is, all you have to do to get her back is sign this trade deal.” And so on. The Biden administration is pursuing strategic containment à la the West’s approach to the Soviet Union. China can’t win relief by promising to buy soybeans.
Xi intends to reclaim Taiwan at some point. He hasn’t, and won’t, rule out force. Whether by accident or by design, this White House has suggested rather explicitly that the US will defend the island militarily. Biden, who understands better than most politicians the utility of America’s long-standing policy of “strategic ambiguity” towards the issue, has adopted an unambiguous cadence on several occasions when asked about a prospective PLA operation in the Strait. Wang on Sunday told Blinken there will be “no compromise” on Taiwan.
Xi is, at the least, looking the other way while dual-use technologies find their way from Chinese SOE’s to Putin’s war machine. The backdoor effort to prop up the flailing Russian military may well go beyond that, and Beijing’s steadfast refusal to call the invasion a war of aggression speaks volumes about Xi’s views on the legitimacy of autocratic territorial claims.
More broadly, and very much contrary to Xi’s rhetoric, China’s ambitions are hegemonic. It’s not necessarily that Xi’s affinity for multilateralism is disingenuous. Rather, it’s that he wants to position China as the heir to America’s claim on economic and military hegemony atop a reconstituted global order, where autocracies aren’t everywhere and always considered second class citizens, and where the US doesn’t have the final say in every important decision. There’s certainly a sense in which such a world would be more “multilateral,” but the danger — and I emphasize this at regular intervals — is autocratic capriciousness.
At a very basic level, you don’t want the world to be run, in whole or in part, by leaders who don’t give their own people a say in domestic affairs. Say what you will about the many evils of US foreign policy, there’s something self-evidently ridiculous about the idea that dictators like Xi can be trusted to preside over a multilateral, democratic world order based on “mutual respect.” Xi doesn’t even respect the rights of Chinese to express themselves freely. That’s not a man you want to put in charge of, for example, development lending in locales with fragile democracies, although to his credit, he’s tough on graft. (That’s dark humor.)
Regrettably, the US-China rift isn’t something that can be repaired as long as Xi continues down the road to iron-fisted, one-man rule. His every word and deed at home is another reason for the West to be wary of giving him a bigger say on the global stage. That simple assessment is often lost in the dense fog of the tragicomedy of errors that is American foreign policy.
I don’t know what the answers are to the world’s many existential problems in the 21st century. It’s pretty clear America doesn’t have them. What I do know is that the path to a better future for humanity doesn’t go through a dictator.
“Planet Earth is big enough to accommodate the respective development and common prosperity of China and the United States,” the Chinese foreign ministry said Monday, cleverly incorporating one of Xi’s favorite socioeconomic catchphrases in a perfunctory account of the meeting with Blinken.
“The international community,” the ministry wrote, expects the US and China to “act with a sense of responsibility [so] they may contribute to global peace and development and help make the world, which is changing and turbulent, more stable, certain and constructive.”
Early in my adult life, I learned that there is a monetary value to every relationship (not what you are thinking!).
USA imports from China are approximately $537B. USA exports to China are about $157B.
Symbiotic.
My guess is that within a tight range, won’t move much.
🙂
IDK. Xi is fairly obsessed with Taiwan and avenging the “century of humiliation”. I get the feeling that you have hawks and doves in China (a difference with Russia) but even then it seems mostly about methods/urgency.
None of them seem willing to admit Taiwan is independent.
I’d propose a delegation of colonial powers (including Russia, Japan and the US) goes to Beijing, fall on their knees and apologize for the evils of imperial power in the 19C if it could help Chinese leaders get over it.
b/c, fundamentally, it’s a truism that China, the US (and the world) stand to benefit far more from continued peace and trade than any war, however limited or constrained. The only one who would suffer in that scenario are the Chinese and Tibetans themselves.
If you believe what our government experts recently concluded from a high-tech simulation of various scenarios involving any Chinese attempt to takeover Taiwan by force with full on US involvement is that we will probably lose and China will emerge mostly a loser as well (reported over the weekend). Meanwhile, I have heard tiny little voices speaking quietly from the semi-darkness that seem to imply there may be a possibility of a bloodless assimilation. That would leave everyone some time and a less costly base for future relations. We have problems, China has problems, none of which could not be solved by armed conflict. We failed to win against China in Vietnam and Korea as well, both conflicts costing many American lives in what a best can be called stalemates.
My pre-retirement employer has been operating two AACSB accredited MBA programs in China without interference for over two decades. These programs, one in Shanghai and one in Hong Kong, provide half our annual graduates. Our nation is 250 years old. Theirs has been around for 5000. Hard not to be a bit of a fan of that longevity. I once read what purported to be an account of the final meeting between the CEO of Loctite and a Chinese trade rep who were signing a deal to make SuperGlue in China. When they were done, the CEO reportedly said, “Well, I’ve got to run; time is money.” The trade rep reportedly responded, “No, sir, time is infinite.”
Good story, Mr. Lucky. Many thanks.
I may be kidding myself, but I believe China will lose some US manufacturing work over time. They may also lose some manufacturing work for European customers. It will make some difference to the CCP, but they won’t admit it’s a problem. And I reckon China can still sustain substantial manufacturing, but just a bit less robust.
In the meantime the US is trying to quickly scale up the presence of the US navy in East Asia. The jury remains out on how this plays out. Xi is overly anxious to get Taiwan. But getting his hands on TSMC chip products makes Xi’ even more anxious.
In Asia Xi holds a better hand than the US, which can put up a great fight and hurt China’s forces. But if TSMC doesn’t want to become a tool of the CCP, they ought to get out of Dodge City in the middle of the night.