The US keeps saying it wants to set a “floor” under the relationship with China. Its recent moves against Beijing and new pressure from Congress make achieving that look increasingly unlikely. US and China talk about better ties but things have become worse.
Two months after President Joe Biden met Xi Jinping in Bali with a promise to arrest a slide in ties, the world’s two biggest economies, and preeminent superpowers have been unable or unwilling to halt a cycle of suspicion and provocation. That’s renewing doubts ahead of talks next week in Beijing about the possibility that the relationship will ever return to normalcy.
The US is pressing ahead with a campaign to limit China’s access to sensitive semiconductor technology, by both limiting exports US companies can send to China and marshaling Japan and the Netherlands to restrict the sale of advanced chip-making equipment. China has largely held off punching back, but has shown a willingness to violate Western sanctions against the purchase of Iranian oil and, according to US officials, deepening its economic ties with Russia despite the invasion of Ukraine.
“Neither capital has indicated that they are prepared to compromise,” said Drew Thompson, a former US Defense Department official responsible for China and currently a senior fellow at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore. All of this makes for a tense environment for Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visit to China next week, the first high-level US encounter there since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. It’s another step in China’s reopening since it shed its Zero Covid strategy, and it may help pave the way for another Biden-Xi meeting at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in the US later this year.
“This is the most consequential bilateral relationship in the world,” US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said this week. He said the two sides would look for modest gains such as expanded contacts over climate change and between their militaries. Josef Gregory Mahoney, a politics professor at Shanghai’s East China Normal University, had a different take: “Perhaps it’s more like a court-mandated meeting with an ex-spouse.”
The last time a secretary of state visited Beijing was 2018, when former President Donald Trump’s top diplomat, Michael Pompeo, had a testy exchange with Foreign Minister Wang Yi. US and China talk about better ties but things have become worse. Wang accused the US of having “damaged our mutual trust” and Pompeo was snubbed by Xi, who broke with precedent and declined to meet with him.
US officials have played down expectations for Blinken’s Beijing visit, emphasizing that it’s mostly symbolic. They’ve described it as solely an effort to show the Biden administration is committed to keeping channels of communication open. The US and China may agree to allow visa holders to stay longer and add to the number of flights between the countries, veteran US diplomat and trade negotiator Wendy Cutler told Bloomberg Television’s “Balance of Power With David Westin” on Monday.
“This is a journey,” said Cutler, a vice president at the Asia Society. “We should not expect any breakthroughs.” The Biden administration has privately confronted the Chinese government over evidence that the US says shows some of the country’s state-owned enterprises have been aiding Russia’s war efforts in Ukraine. Blinken will push his Chinese counterparts on the matter and make clear that the US is watching, officials said.
The meeting may be more important for China than it is for the US. China looking to spur flagging economic growth and emerge from the Covid-19 pandemic for good has a strong interest in making it at least look like relations are getting back on track. Xi’s abrupt shift toward a more growth-first strategy since securing a third term as Communist Party leader has helped propel a dramatic turnaround in markets. The MSCI China Index, which had slumped to an 11-year low in October, has gained more than 50% in subsequent weeks, becoming one of the world’s best-performing gauges.
US and China talk about better ties but things have become worse. Beijing is urging common ground for the sake of global economic recovery, the Communist Party’s flagship newspaper said. The US hasn’t “let go of its obsession with treating China as a so-called strategic competitor,” the People’s Daily said in a commentary Wednesday, adding that “blind anti-China approaches will not work.”
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