Global Courant
A sober greeting on the tarmac of Beijing airport without a red carpet. A firm handshake from China’s top foreign policy official. A chair looking up at the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, at the head of a long table.
The perspective of Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken’s two-day visit to Beijing hardly raised any eyebrows for the international public. Foreign ministers rarely, if ever, get much fanfare at the airport. And an audience with only a head of state is a sign of great importance and respect.
But for China’s nationalist audience, especially on social media, the scenes tell a different story. Mr. Blinken only arrived to them after months of begging for an invitation. And during his visit, he was trained in respecting China’s interests and played supplicant for Mr. Xi. Chinese social media users gleefully noted that Mr. Blinken arrived on Father’s Day, implying – in the parlance of the Internet – that Mr. Xi was America’s father.
The nationalist commentary in China surrounding Mr Blinken’s visit underlined a point Mr Xi made during his meeting with the top US diplomat on Monday: “Competition between major countries does not represent the trend of the times.” The translation: Surrounding China with security partners and cutting off access to advanced technology is not healthy competition, but an invitation to conflict.
Mr Xi’s rejection of the drafting of US-China relations by the two most recent US presidents casts doubt on whether the world’s two superpowers can achieve strategic alignment with each other in the coming years.
“They apparently don’t believe in this framework at all,” said Bonnie Glaser, general manager of the United States German Marshall Fund’s Indo-Pacific program.
“That begs the question: is it then possible to stabilize relations?”
It’s unclear to what extent the state played a role in promoting the triumphant story online, though Chinese censors generally have broad scrutiny to influence public opinion. Even in China’s more controlled, state-controlled news outlets, which mainly carry summaries of government meetings, coverage of the visit emphasized Beijing’s view that Mr Blinken was visiting to reassure the Chinese government and to care to listen.
Depicting China as a strong and responsible power willing to ease tensions with a belligerent United States may disguise the less politically acceptable reasons Beijing wants to work with Washington again, analysts say. Chief among these is the need to stabilize China’s economy, which is struggling to recover from three years of punitive pandemic restrictions.
“The optics of Xi Jinping lecturing a junior US Secretary of State from the head of a boardroom table play well to a domestic audience that China is a world power that not only demands but also receives respect from other great powers,” Drew said. Thompson, a visiting senior research fellow at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore.
He noted that Mr. Blinken’s two immediate predecessors—Mike Pompeo and Rex W. Tillerson—were sitting in armchairs next to Mr. Xi when they met. (Mr Xi sat with Mr Pompeo in Beijing in June 2018, but did not meet the US secretary when he returned in October.) Others pointed out that Bill Gates had been invited to sit next to a smiling Mr Xi in an ornate wooden chair last week.
US officials say Mr Blinken’s trip was necessary because maintaining regular, high-level diplomacy between the world’s two superpower rivals – and its two largest economies and militaries – is critical to avoiding open conflict. Not only the two governments strive for stability in the relationship, but also their allies and other nations. And diplomacy allows the two sides to make their positions clear in private and public conversations.
“If you want to stand up for American human rights values and if you want to free Americans detained here or enlist China’s help in the fentanyl crisis, you can’t do it from the sidelines,” said R. Nicholas Burns, the US ambassador. in Beijing, said in an interview Tuesday. ‘You have to talk to them and put pressure on them, as Minister Blinken did during his visit here. You don’t give anything away by talking.”
“The Chinese received the secretary with great dignity,” added Mr. Burns, who attends all of Mr. Blink was present. “President Xi Jinping was very courteous during the meeting.”
Chinese officials, eager to shift focus to trade as an anchor in US-China relations, had pushed for a visit from Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, but US officials insisted that Mr. Blinken had to precede them. Now those other two US cabinet officials are expected to travel to Beijing this summer, as is John Kerry, the climate envoy.
Analysts say China hopes the talks can bolster business confidence as many of the traditional levers of Chinese economic growth, such as real estate, face dramatic challenges.
In addition, China wants to emphasize to the Biden administration that it opposes trade restrictions that stifle Chinese access to key technologies, such as advanced semiconductor chips.
“Xi’s main motivation for entertaining the Americans is that the Chinese economy is in a very bad shape,” said Willy Lam, a Chinese politics analyst and a senior fellow at the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington-based research institute. “Exports have dropped noticeably, and more U.S. and Western companies are moving their manufacturing bases out of China.”
By hosting Mr Blinken, China also sought to lay the groundwork for Mr Xi’s visit to the United States in November for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit — a trip that could lead to a one-on-one a meeting with President Biden, the kind of visit would help polish Mr. Xi’s image as a world statesman.
Beijing may also be moved by a sense of urgency to pressure the Biden administration for more assurances that pro-independence sentiment in Taiwan will not rekindle, especially ahead of presidential elections in both the United States and Taiwan next year . In both places, politicians have ramped up their rhetoric about the Chinese Communist Party during campaign years, believing it helps win votes.
China is outraged by the Biden administration’s growing support for the democratic, self-governing island — including a new trade deal, more arms sales, and increased exchanges between officials. The Blinken visit gave China an opportunity to signal that it has warned the United States not to provoke Beijing over what its leaders have called the “core of China’s core interests.”
While Mr Blinken’s visit may have helped end the freeze on top-level bilateral diplomacy, it also highlighted the fact that an important dialogue between the two nations remains jeopardized by China’s stance on Taiwan and growing military and economic rivalries.
After House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan last August, Beijing froze formal interactions with Washington on military issues, climate change and narcotics. China has only agreed to resume climate change negotiations. US officials attended the Beijing meetings in hopes that China would reopen direct channels of military-to-military communications, including those between the US Secretary of Defense, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the head of the Indo-Pacific Command and their Chinese counterparts.
Chinese officials who met with Mr Blinken rejected the request.
Olivia Wang contributed reporting.
