The Biden administration’s first meeting with top Chinese Communist Party officials since taking office will be held in Alaska on March 18. Before the meeting, the U.S. side first revealed the top five topics for the talks. As for the timing of the talks, outsiders believe that the U.S. side arranged very clever.
The State Department confirmed on March 10 that the first meeting of senior U.S. and Chinese officials will be held in Anchorage, Alaska, on March 18. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan will attend the meeting, while the Chinese side will be represented by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Yang Jiechi, who is a member of the Politburo and director of the Central Foreign Affairs Commission.
The Wall Street Journal quoted a senior State Department official as saying that the top five issues to be discussed would include the New Coronavirus pandemic, climate change, the Chinese Communist Party’s position on Hong Kong and pressure on Taiwan, as well as the Communist Party’s “unannounced economic embargo” on Australia.
The timing of the meeting is very clever, as it comes after Biden’s quadrilateral summit with the heads of India, Japan and Australia, as well as Secretary of State Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s trips to Japan and South Korea.
President Biden will attend a video conference on Thursday (12) of the “Quadripartite Talks,” a meeting of heads of state that is seen as a “mini-NATO” meeting in Asia to defend against the expansion of the Chinese Communist Party.
In addition, Secretary of State Blinken and Secretary of Defense Austin will travel to Tokyo and Seoul from March 15 to 18 to hold 2+2 talks with the foreign and defense ministers of Japan and South Korea.
After the above-mentioned foreign affairs activities, the U.S. top brass will hold talks with the Chinese Communist Party. Experts believe that such an itinerary highlights the importance the U.S. attaches to issues in the Asia-Pacific region on the one hand, and also reflects the attitude of prioritizing allies on the other.
The Chinese Communist Party, on the other hand, seems to have been waiting for a long Time. Since Biden took office, the Chinese Communist Party’s top brass has repeatedly shouted at the U.S. for contact with the American side.
U.S. media reported that since December last year, the Chinese authorities have been lobbying to send Yang Jiechi to the U.S. quickly after Biden’s inauguration to try to calm the sharply increasing confrontational relations between the U.S. and China. But after the U.S. media reported this, the Chinese Embassy in the U.S. denied it for a time.
In response, Patrick Cronin, director of Asia-Pacific security at the Hudson Institute, a Washington think tank, told Radio Free Asia that the Chinese side seems more anxious to meet than Washington.
Cronin’s analysis, cited by Free Asia on March 10, suggests that Xi is considering seeking space and time for a “reset” of U.S.-China relations before the major agendas of the Beijing Winter Olympics in early 2022 and the 20th Communist Party Congress in the second half of the year. Biden’s considerations are to focus his foreign policy on the Indo-Pacific region and to work closely with allies on issues of confrontation with the Chinese Communist Party.
In addition, the former U.S. Secretary of Defense adviser and current think tank Center for a New American Security (Centre for a New American Security) senior researcher Martin Rasser (Martijn Rasser) analysis, the United States is sending a very clear signal to the Chinese Communist Party.
Rasser said the front and center of the U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy is to interact with allies and partners, and to let Beijing know there should be no unrealistic illusions that the relationship with Washington will magically reset.
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