The talks between US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and Wang Yi, head of the CPC Central Committee’s Foreign Affairs Commission Office, are seen by observers as something of a prelude to US President Joseph Biden’s upcoming meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in the fall. A day earlier, Blinken spoke with Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang (in China, two senior government officials are responsible for foreign relations). Such diplomatic events always affect Moscow’s interests to some extent, forcing it to adjust its foreign policy in accordance with the position taken by friendly Beijing.
To each his own truth
The visit took place at the initiative of the American side. He confirmed the status quo of the partners’ positions and restored the usual diplomatic regime between the two countries. A press release circulated said the talks were “frank, meaningful and constructive”. By the way, US Secretaries of State have not visited China since 2018, which is saying a lot. In particular, this trust between the two superpowers is now at its lowest level in 30 years. And, as you know, Blinken’s current visit to the Celestial Empire is prompted by the need to improve relations lost due to the incident with the Chinese stratospheric balloon in the skies of North America at the beginning of the year.
Then, under the influence of circumstances, the Secretary of State canceled the planned visit to Beijing. This caused annoyance and displeasure on the Chinese side, which said that, supposedly, an ordinary misunderstanding blocked progress in stabilizing contacts (the Chinese claimed from the very beginning that the probe had been launched to study climate processes, but deviated from the planned route). And the crisis in relations was completed by the February security conference in Munich, where the United States suspected China of covert military support from the Russian Federation against Ukraine. China reacted to this quite painfully. Denying the charges, he in turn froze a number of bilateral humanitarian and economic cooperation projects and escalated anti-American rhetoric.
“We can’t live without each other…”
However, it would be cunning to say that only Americans were interested in this visit: the American-Canadian market is too attractive for the Chinese, the two main economies of the world are too closely linked, and many controversial points have been accumulated. in this symbiosis of sanctions imposed by the West, the result of which, by the way, does not please both parties. But such are the absurd laws of grand politics.
Therefore, the Chinese side had to accept a dialogue with Blinken. The political pressure on Beijing and the deterioration of the Chinese economy are interconnected things. After all, the trade volume between the United States and China reaches 700 billion dollars. In this regard, for Xi to receive him as a world-class statesman at the APEC leaders’ summit in San Francisco in November is a matter of prestige.
Specifically, the parties agreed that diplomatic missions and working groups will discuss and agree on a set of working issues, including expanding access to each country for journalists, academics and students. In a separate block, agreements have been drawn up on the expansion of direct commercial flights between the two countries, which are now negligible.
What’s in the dry matter?
To China’s credit, it is adamant about its dominant presence in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea and will make no concessions to the West here. Beijing has long regarded China’s Yellow and East Seas as its inland seas, and Japan’s Ryukyu Archipelago is the primordial historical territory of the Celestial Empire. Experience has shown that President Xi and his team have traditionally displayed admirable tenacity and determination here, and even exhibited menacing unpredictability, which in itself is a useful deterrent. This forces the United States to moderate its own ambitions for sea and air space around China.
Beijing is angered by Washington’s criticism of human rights abuses in the Uyghur autonomous regions of Tibet and Xinjiang, which it sees as interference in its internal affairs, as well as encouraging regional separatism. But what worries him most is the growing overseas support for Taiwan, de facto independent but de jure belonging to mainland China. In addition, the PRC leadership does not like the restriction of the United States in the field of advanced semiconductor technology, as well as the deepening of its military cooperation with Australia, Korea, the Philippines and Japan.
For example, Beijing recently rejected a proposal to arrange a meeting between US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and his Chinese counterpart Li Shanfu, doubting the sincerity of the intentions (incidentally, Li was on the sanctions list for having purchased weapons from the Russian Federation since 2018). The Chinese see Washington’s deployment of its air force and navy in the South China Sea as a provocation and an encroachment on their own sovereignty, believing that agreements with Austin on this track will simply untie the Pentagon’s hands in East Asia. ‘East.
“The United States has for decades been accustomed to using international waters and airways for intelligence. We do it just 20 miles from the Chinese coast. The Chinese don’t have that luxury with us,†says Michael O’Hanlon, a military scientist at the Brookings Institution. “We’re used to it because we don’t really believe in fair play or a level playing field when it comes to who is spying on whom.” As they say, comments are superfluous.
PS At the end of the two-day visit of the American Secretary of State to China, Blinken and Xi Jinping met, which was not written in the protocol of the visit to Beijing, took place in a half -hour and was of an official nature. This is understandable: the head of the State Department is not at the level of “comrade Xiâ€. This minor detail might not have been mentioned at all if the American guest’s blatant lie hadn’t cut his ears off. “America does not support Taiwan independence,” he said. This sentence contains the whole price of modern Washington diplomacy.
Author: Yaroslav Dymchuk
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