Secretary of State Tony Blinken said on Oct. 10 that he and White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan will meet soon in Alaska with Yang Jiechi, director of the Foreign Affairs Office of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, but that this is not the form of “strategic dialogue” that the U.S. and China have had in the past. The U.S. will raise issues of concern to the U.S., including human rights in Xinjiang, and the U.S. will look more to China for concrete actions and substantive results in addressing these issues, which will also be relevant to subsequent engagement between the two countries.
Before departing for his visit to traditional allies Japan and South Korea next Monday (15), Blinken appeared before the House Foreign Affairs Committee to discuss “the foreign policy priorities of the Biden administration. He made it clear that “China is the ‘greatest geopolitical test’ of the 21st century for the United States,” and that managing U.S.-China relations well is one of the Biden Administration‘s foreign policy priorities. The three principles of the United States are competition, cooperation and, if necessary, confrontation. He also foreshadowed that the meeting with Yang Jiechi and Wang Yi was a side trip on his way back to Washington after his first trip to Asia, and that he would say whatever he needed to say about U.S. concerns, including the Xinjiang genocide.
Blinken noted, “This is an important opportunity for us to be candid and forthright about the challenges Beijing poses to us and our allies on regional security, prosperity and values …… This is not some ‘strategic dialogue ‘. At this point in Time, the United States has no intention of embarking on such a series of engagements. For the two sides to have sustained engagement afterwards, the United States must see China come up with substantial progress and concrete results in addressing our concerns.”
Similar to former President Trump, who advocated for a “results-oriented” U.S.-China relationship, Blinken’s statement is a preview of the first high-level official contacts between the U.S. and China since the Biden administration took office, not a return to the “meeting for meeting” approach of the past, which focused only on form. The meeting was not a repeat of the old “meeting for meeting” approach.
Blinken calls on China to open door to Xinjiang
According to the weather forecast, the minimum temperature in Anchorage, where Blinken and Sullivan met with Yang Jiechi and Wang Yi, could reach minus 10 degrees Celsius on the 18th day of the meeting, making it difficult for U.S.-China relations to warm up and break the ice.
In addition to reiterating his position that genocide occurred in Xinjiang, Blinken added that he would be sure to tell Wang and Yang that “since China claims that there is no (genocide) happening in Xinjiang, let the international community, the United Nations, be able to visit Xinjiang (completely unrestricted). Since they say there’s nothing to hide, let’s show it to everyone.”
Both House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Gregory Meeks, a Democrat, and House Foreign Affairs Committee Ranking Member Michael McCaul, a Republican, referred in their remarks to the various actions of the Chinese Communist Party in the international arena to “profit from the Epidemic,” posing a threat to U.S. national security.
With a high degree of bipartisan consensus in Congress on China, there is little room for the Biden administration to become dovish in its stance on China.
Bo Ming on United Front: Chinese Communist Party’s Threats to U.S. Businesses Move Hard
However, Matt Pottinger, who just stepped down as White House deputy national security adviser, analyzed the “China’s Sharp Power” seminar at the Hoover Institution, a think tank, that before Biden took office, Chinese President Xi Jinping used all his connections and On the other hand, China has never ceased to threaten and entice foreign companies operating in China, expressing and implying that if they want to earn RMB, they should not talk about democracy and human rights values in China.
Bomen said that in the four years of the Trump Administration and the 50 days since the Biden administration took office, he has yet to see any substantive action from Beijing to improve U.S.-China relations. If he were to give the Biden administration a tip, he would suggest that Sullivan and Blinken make sure to stick to the U.S. moral ground of defending human rights when they meet with the Chinese.
“We also have Americans who are being held as hostages in China. None of them have committed a crime, but they are trapped in China and barred from leaving the country; and, I would also suggest that we need to speak up for two Canadian citizens who are not considered to have committed any crime at all, or are just misdemeanors.” said Bomin, who currently serves as a visiting scholar at the Hoover Institution.
Booming noted that China’s human rights atrocities in Xinjiang, its strangulation of the rule of law in Hong Kong, and its ambition to violate Taiwan by force are always presented as red lines, repeatedly ignoring the concerns of the international community.
Because Australia first called for an investigation into the origin of the epidemic, China sanctioned Australia through trade means and gave Australia 14 warnings. Booming said that countries, including the United States, should also make their own 14-point wish list when engaging with China, clearly telling China that if these issues are not actually addressed, “there is no way to engage” and that the United States and China do not need to “meet for the sake of meeting”.
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