High-level diplomatic “2+2” talks between the United States and China will be held in Alaska early this morning, Hong Kong Time. This is a meeting of senior Chinese and U.S. officials after a nine-month hiatus, which is attracting worldwide attention. The timing and location of the talks show that the U.S. side is overpowering the Chinese side, and the two sides have been talking badly to each other before the meeting instead of creating a good atmosphere, making the outside world see no hope of breaking the ice in Sino-U.S. relations. This trip by Chinese officials is comparable to the humiliation described by Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian when he crossed the border in 2007. It does not matter how well the play was performed or whether it was fruitful, it will eventually be publicized as a victory for Xi Jinping‘s diplomacy with the United States.
U.S. actions before meeting extremely humiliating
When the White House announced the “2+2” meeting between senior Chinese and American diplomats, it emphasized the significance of the location and timing of the meeting. The venue was on U.S. soil, i.e., the U.S. was in charge; the timing was “after we have met and consulted closely with our partners and friends in Asia and Europe,” i.e., the Chinese side was a “second-class” non-friend, non-partner diplomatic partner. The Chinese Communist Party is most afraid of losing face, so it insists that this is a “high-level strategic dialogue” between China and the United States.
What is particularly remarkable is that two actions by the U.S. side before the “2+2” meeting were extremely humiliating to the Chinese Communist Party. First, the U.S. and Japanese foreign ministers and defense ministers issued a joint statement after the “2+2” meeting, naming China’s unprecedented expansion in the East China Sea and South China Sea and human rights violations in Hong Kong and Xinjiang. Second, the U.S. updated its list of sanctions against Chinese and Hong Kong officials, naming 24 of them as undermining Hong Kong’s autonomy.
Although the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson severely criticized the U.S.-Japan joint statement and the sanctions list, and used the U.S. sanctions against Chinese companies to denounce “the U.S. as a genuine eavesdropping empire, stealing empire and hacking empire,” the two highest-ranking officials of the Chinese Communist Party’s diplomatic system, Yang Jiechi, director of the Chinese Foreign Affairs Office, and Wang Yi, foreign minister, went to the meeting as scheduled and did not counter the the humiliation of the U.S. side’s words and actions.
In May 2006, Chen requested to transit through the United States on a trip to Central America, but was unhappy that he was only allowed to transit through Anchorage and changed his itinerary to the United Arab Emirates. In order to highlight the importance of transit diplomacy before leaving office, he accepted a 50-minute stopover, and to express his dissatisfaction, he met with U.S. officials without a suit and tie and without getting off the plane. “The company’s main goal is to provide the best possible service to its customers.
China seeks to promote diplomatic victory
In April 2017, Xi Jinping took a return trip to Alaska after going to his first summit with Trump at his Sea Lake estate in Florida. Four years later, Alaska became the starting point for high-level contacts between the U.S. and Chinese governments again. The top Chinese officials went to the meeting in disgrace, and naturally, their intentions were not small. According to reports, the Chinese side is demanding the withdrawal of the Trump Administration‘s sanctions and restrictions on China and pushing for a visual summit between the Chinese and U.S. heads of state next month. The Chinese side’s bargaining chip is to assist the U.S. in fighting Wuhan pneumonia, addressing global climate change, limiting nuclear proliferation, and dealing with the North Korean nuclear issue.
In fact, the CCP knows that these bargaining chips will not stop the U.S. from besieging the CCP on economic, trade, military, and human rights issues, and that neither the “2+2” talks between diplomats nor the summit between Xi Jinping and Biden next month are likely to yield substantive results and fill the gap left by the nine-month decoupling of senior Chinese and U.S. officials and the departure of the U.S. ambassador to China for nearly six months. However, the Chinese Communist Party urgently needs such “strategic dialogues” and “summits” to publicize Xi’s diplomatic triumphs, and the meeting will be a strategic dialogue, and the summit will be “beyond the Western theory of international relations for more than 300 years. “Xi Jinping’s diplomatic triumphs.
Xi Jinping has already declared an overwhelming victory in the fight against corruption, a victory in the fight against epidemics, and a comprehensive victory in the national war against poverty, paving the way for his renewal as general secretary and president of the Communist Party next year and the year after on the domestic front. Whether he can surpass Deng Xiaoping and Mao Zedong in terms of party status will depend on what he does on Hong Kong, Taiwan and the United States. The criticism of him within the party is now mainly directed at his messing up Deng Xiaoping’s painstaking efforts to achieve autonomy for Hong Kong and diplomacy with the United States. The victory of the unification of Taiwan has yet to be seen, but Hong Kong is on its way to victory with the legislation on national security and “patriots ruling Hong Kong”, and another victory in diplomacy with the United States is not enough to erect a monument to the great achievements of an emperor of the ages.
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