The U.S. media revealed on March 12 that the U.S. and China had a closed-door meeting in Alaska in March. The Chinese Communist Party revealed the bottom line to the U.S. side in advance, asking the Biden administration to retract Trump’s (Trump’s) policy on China and to resume the “dialogue” mechanism between the high level of the U.S. and China. The Chinese side also divided their differences into three categories in an attempt to repeat the past Chinese Communist infiltration of the United States.
On April 13, the Epoch Times cited a report in the Wall Street Journal that senior Chinese officials, in a closed-door meeting in Alaska in March, again used the approach of the U.S.-China trade talks to divide the issues that divide China and the United States into three categories – those that are easily resolved, those that require negotiations, and those that are not negotiated at all.
As expected, Xi’s top foreign policy official Yang Jiechi and Foreign Minister Wang Yi asked the Biden administration to roll back Trump’s (Trump’s) policy toward China at a meeting of top diplomats in Alaska. At the same time, Beijing wanted to resume the so-called high-level “dialogue” mechanism that the U.S. side sees as a waste of time.
But Yang Jiechi’s own out-of-the-box, high-profile statement in his opening remarks in Alaska seemed to indicate a major shift in the Chinese Communist Party leaders’ view of the United States and an attempt by the Communist Party to reshape U.S.-China relations.
China divides U.S.-China differences into three categories
The China Daily quoted U.S. officials who were briefed on the meeting as saying that in the closed-door meeting, the Chinese side divided their differences into three categories.
The first category can be handled fairly easily, while the second requires more negotiation. For example, calls for both sides to ease restrictions on diplomats and journalists fall into the first two categories.
The third category is those where the CCP does not agree to negotiate, mainly concerning the issue of Chinese sovereignty, including Taiwan.
This classification follows the same pattern as previous trade negotiations with the Trump administration by Liu He, the CCP’s vice premier and Xi Jinping’s special envoy for trade negotiations.
A senior U.S. official warned that the Chinese Communist Party could act rashly because of its exaggerated belief that the United States is a declining power.
Xi claims one-party dictatorship lets him make things happen
The China Daily also quoted Chinese officials as saying that the chaotic U.S. response to the epidemic pandemic, as well as the race riots that followed the summer and the Jan. 6 Capitol storm, have cemented Xi’s confidence in the superiority of the Chinese (Communist) system.
In internal meetings, they say, Xi has compared U.S. democracy to “a scattering of sand” and claimed that one-party dictatorship allows him to get things done.
Communist Party officials have been claiming that they are following Xi’s lead and trying to “reclaim the right to speak” internationally; in addition to actively denouncing Western interference in China’s internal affairs, Communist Party diplomats and official media are also internally promoting China’s rise and promoting nationalist pride.
Senior Communist Party officials privately refer to the United States as “the boss” and “the big boss”. For the past several decades, Communist leaders have been careful to follow Deng Xiaoping’s directive to “keep the light under wraps” and not challenge the U.S. head-on as the world leader.
Prior to the Alaska meeting, Xi said on March 6 at a joint meeting of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) that China (CCP) can already look at the world on an equal footing. The statement was widely interpreted by the official Chinese Communist Party media as a declaration that China (CCP) no longer looks up to the United States.
The report said, “In Xi Jinping’s view, China’s (CCP’s) time has come.”
The Chinese Communist Party had already tried to arrange a high-level meeting between the two sides before Biden took office
After Biden took office, the report said, Chinese Communist Party scholars and officials turned to contacts in the United States to try to figure out whether the new administration would change Trump’s line on China. But they were quickly thwarted.
Even before Biden took office, Chinese Communist diplomats tried to arrange a high-level meeting between the two sides, people familiar with the matter said. For his part, Biden did not agree to the request and instead repeatedly talked about working with allies to counter China (the Chinese Communist Party).
In January, then-Secretary of State nominee Antony Blinken said at his confirmation hearing that China (the Chinese Communist Party) had committed genocide against Uighur Muslims in northwest Xinjiang. This reinforces the concerns of the Chinese Communist Party. The Chinese Communist Party has always denied this fact and called it the “lie of the century.
The Biden team has so far continued its Trump-era identification of China as the United States’ greatest military, technological and economic challenger.
“From the perspective of the new administration, China’s provocations have never ceased.” The report concluded that Beijing cut off imports of goods from Australia after the country demanded an investigation into the source of the Chinese Communist virus (coronavirus), in addition to skirmishes with India along the Himalayan border and attempts to intimidate Philippine and Vietnamese ships in the South China Sea.
Prior to the Alaska meeting, the United States sent tough signals to the Chinese. President Biden met online with leaders from India, Australia and Japan; meanwhile, Secretary of State Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan visited Tokyo and Seoul to confer with their counterparts and insisted on meeting with Chinese officials in Alaska, not Asia.
The day before the meeting, the United States announced sanctions against two dozen Chinese Communist Party officials over its crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong.
U.S. Strategy to Unite Allies Irks Beijing
A few days after the Alaska meeting, Kurt Campbell, the White House coordinator for China affairs, attended a private meeting at the University of California, San Diego. Campbell said Beijing appeared to be “impatient” with the Biden administration’s coalition strategy, according to participants.
Since the Alaska meeting, both the U.S. and China have been playing a competitive game of finding allies. Within a week, Blinken, along with Canada, the European Union and the United Kingdom, organized a joint condemnation of the Communist Party’s Xinjiang policy, the first human rights sanctions against the Communist Party since the EU crackdown on Tiananmen Square protesters in 1989.
Ratification of the EU Parliament’s pending investment treaty with the CCP may become more difficult after the CCP blacklisted European parliamentarians and think tanks in retaliation for the EU’s human rights sanctions.
Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga will travel to the United States on April 16 to meet with Biden. Japanese Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi previously called on Beijing to improve the human rights situation of Uighurs and to end its crackdown on Hong Kong.
The Chinese Communist Party is also reaching out intensively to allies. Wang Yi met with the Russian foreign minister in late March. The Global Times, a mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party, published an article saying that China and Russia want to break the U.S.-controlled “world order. Wang Yi then traveled to the Middle East and signed a wide range of economic and security agreements with Iran.
India and other countries are trying to avoid being caught in the middle between China and the United States.
Communist China retaliates against foreign companies in China
With Biden in the White House, the Chinese Communist Party is increasingly taking aim at foreign companies in China, suggesting that foreign companies that do not abide by Beijing’s rules will lose access to the Chinese market. This is a storyline that has already played out during the U.S.-China trade talks, using businesspeople to put pressure on foreign political circles.
International apparel brands H&M, Nike and Adidas have recently been rehashed and subjected to an officially guided wind of boycott over their stance against sourcing cotton from Xinjiang. In addition, Chinese Communist authorities have restricted military personnel and employees of certain state-owned enterprises from using electric cars made by the U.S. company Tesla, citing concerns about car camera leaks and national security risks.
No one is forcing foreign companies to stay in China, Yang Jiechi said in Alaska.
Chinese Communist Party Increases Pressure on Taiwan
The situation in Taiwan has become increasingly complicated since Biden took power. Adm. Phil Davidson, head of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, warned earlier in March during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing that mainland China could try to take control of Taiwan by 2030, perhaps as short as six years.
Ge Laiyi, a China analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the Chinese Communist Party is concerned that the Biden administration is leaning more heavily on Taiwan, so they are using an expanding toolbox to pressure Taiwan and signal to the United States that “it better watch out.
To date, the Biden administration has remained publicly committed to safeguarding Taiwan’s economy and security and adhering to the “One China” policy, guided by the Taiwan Relations Act, the three U.S.-China Joint Communiqués and the Six Assurances.
The State Department on April 9 released updated guidance for U.S. government departments on their interactions with their Taiwanese counterparts under the Taiwan Pledge Act, easing decades of restrictions that have prevented U.S. and Taiwanese diplomats from meeting, and restarting the symbolic “Twin Oaks” event.
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