US President Joe Biden has been in politics for 50 years, and he is putting that experience toward organizing a united front to take on China and Russia. In the process, he has modified the US government’s diplomatic policy and bolstered some areas of weakness.
The Biden administration has increased its financial aid to developing countries and tried to increase awareness of China’s ambition to developed nations. Most notably, European countries have come to see China in a new light.
In this context, Washington has also designed a variety of new strategies to deal with China, but what will be its next step? Will US-China relations change? Can they decouple in any meaningful way? Several recent confrontations are worth looking at.
The first confrontation was at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore. During the event, the Chinese side refused to meet with US representatives. One of the reasons was that Chinese Minister of National Defense Li Shangfu (李尚福) was sanctioned by the US government in 2018 for buying Russian weapons.
Normally, the US might not seek to engage in talks with Li, although when the US imposed sanctions on him he was not yet defense minister. Now in his new role, Li intentionally made it difficult for the US. Nevertheless, it was strange that the US wanted to talk with Li without first lifting the sanctions.
In the end, Li and US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin shook hands, but they did not talk, although Li said that China would not rule out the possibility of dialogue with the US.
Clearly, the Chinese government wishes to establish a relatively friendly relationship with the US. Beijing and Washington had already made their own viewpoints known at the Shangri-La convention, and both listened to what the other wanted to say. In this sense, a face-to-face conversation did not matter much.
After a Chinese spy balloon was shot down by the US, the only meeting between Chinese and US officials occurred toward the end of last month in Washington, where Chinese Minister of Commerce Wang Wentao (王文濤) met with US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo.
The second confrontation was an actual military faceoff in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait. Within the space of a week, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) twice almost crashed into a US military vessel and plane after a provocative maneuver.
On May 26, in airspace above the South China Sea, a PLA J-16 fighter flew directly in front of and within 122m of the nose of a US Air Force RC-135 surveillance plane.
On Saturday last week, the Chinese destroyer Suzhou aggressively cut in front of the USS Chung-Hoon, an Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer, while it was conducting a joint mission with the HMCS Montreal in the Taiwan Strait.
The US criticized the PLA maneuvers as “unprofessional,” but China has been highly skillful. An “unprofessional” incident was 22 years ago when Chinese F-8 pilot Wang Wei (王偉) was killed after a collision with a US spy plane near Hainan Island.
After the recent two incidents, the US has been acting cautiously to avoid any trouble, with the hope that Beijing and Washington can restart a dialogue.
The third confrontation was in a US-China exchange carried out earlier this month. The exchanges have been going on for years. China’s attitude used to be hard-nosed, but today, Beijing has softened its stance and tried to keep its relationship with Washington in check. On the other hand, even though the US has been acting high-handedly when dealing with issues related to the Taiwan Strait and advanced technology, it has also shown a willingness to cooperate with China.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) said that China “must adhere to bottom-line thinking and worst-case-scenario thinking, and get ready to undergo the major tests of high winds and rough waves, and even perilous, stormy seas.”
Meanwhile, Washington has treated Beijing as its rival, while seeking collaboration in several aspects.
During such an intense time, on Sunday last week, a sensitive date for Beijing as it was the anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre, US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Daniel Kritenbrink visited China and met with Chinese Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Ma Zhaoxu (馬朝旭). Washington said that the talks were “candid” and “productive.”
Let us wait and see what effect their conversation would have on relations.
China considers the US its archenemy, setting up defenses all the time, but on the other hand, the US has treated China as an enemy and a friend. For Washington, the Sino-US relationship involves competition and collaboration, with the emphasis on the former.
At this point, half of the US’ commodities still come from China, even though that amount has decreased by 10 percent within the past decade. It would be awkward for Washington to try to stop European countries from doing business with China, and the US could not treat Xi like it did Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. Still, US House of Representatives Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner has been lambasting Biden’s China policy, urging the US to stand strong in the face of escalating aggression from China.
Paul Lin is a political commentator.
Translated by Emma Liu
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