It is a rare combination for the top Chinese diplomat Yang Jiechi and Foreign Minister Wang Yi to visit the United States. In the past, Yang Jiechi visited the U.S. either alone or with Wang Yi as part of a large Chinese delegation to attend events such as China-U.S. summits and strategic dialogues, but there has never been a pairing of Yang Jiechi and Wang Yi on a trip.
On Thursday (March 18) and Friday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan met with top Communist Party diplomat Yang Jiechi and Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Alaska.
Yang Jiechi May Serve as Xi Jinping‘s Special Envoy to Deliver Letter to Biden
Diplomacy with the U.S. is the most important element of the CCP’s foreign policy, and Yang Jiechi has been his business as head of the CCP Central Committee’s Foreign Affairs Office.
The Nikkei Asian Review said the rare combination of Yang and Wang suggests that the Communist Party leaders do not want an ordinary meeting of foreign ministers and that they want to start new high-level talks with the Biden Administration.
“Yang’s rank is so high that it stands to reason that he would play the role of Xi’s special envoy, carrying with him a personal letter from Xi to Biden. If Yang were to deliver such a letter to U.S. officials in Alaska, Beijing could use it as a symbol of Sino-U.S. rapprochement.” The Nikkei article writes.
Last June, Yang Jiechi met with then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Hawaii. Last month, Yang also spoke with Blinken by phone, laying the groundwork for Xi’s first phone conversation with Biden.
China rumored to want to propose new framework to restart annual strategic dialogue
The Wall Street Journal reports that Yang and Wang plan to propose a new framework for regular annual meetings between the two countries to resolve differences in the economy, trade, security and other areas, during their trip. The so-called strategic dialogue model was established during the George W. Bush Jr. administration and continued under Obama, when Blinken and Sullivan were senior foreign policy officials.
Trump gradually abolished the dialogue mechanism after taking office because he believed the Chinese Communist Party was using it to drag the U.S. government into endless consultations. The Biden administration has so far shown no interest in rescheduling such talks.
A senior Biden administration official downplayed expectations surrounding any agreement the U.S. and China would reach through the Alaska meeting. The official described it as a one-Time meeting that does not herald “the restart of a particular dialogue mechanism or the beginning of a dialogue process.
Wang Yi May Retire Next Year and Yang Jiechi’s Visit Have Behind-the-Scenes Considerations
It is reported that since Biden won the U.S. election in November, the Chinese Communist Party has been reaching out to the Biden administration and exploring the possibility of Yang Jiechi’s visit to the U.S. At the same time, they also want to send Liu He, vice premier in charge of the economy and a member of the Communist Party’s Politburo, to go there.
Liu He is the main Chinese representative for the first phase of the U.S.-China trade agreement to be signed in January 2020 and is also a close aide to Xi Jinping.
Liu He’s absence from the trip means that the talks will not involve the Trump Administration‘s hard-line tariff trade policies toward China.
Yang Jiechi, 70, is the Politburo member in charge of foreign affairs, and the Communist Party’s Politburo consists of 25 top-ranking officials who participate in all important decisions. Wang Yi, 67, is not yet a member of the Politburo and is expected to retire after the National Congress in 2022, in accordance with the CCP’s theoretical retirement age limit of 68.
The Nikkei Asian Review said there is now growing speculation that the trip to Alaska — as Wang joins hands with Yang — could pave the way for Wang to succeed Yang in the role in the future. The travel arrangement could be linked to personnel changes at next year’s party congress.
Another official, Xi’s longtime ally Wang Qishan, stayed on as Xi’s vice president after his customary retirement age.
Secretary of State and national security adviser hosting China is also rare
Biden officials also acknowledged at a State Department briefing on the meeting on the 16th that sending the secretary of state and national security adviser to host their Chinese counterparts was an “unprecedented pairing.
“We have not had the national security adviser and the secretary of state meet with their Chinese counterparts before, and in fact, we think that this personnel arrangement is important, not just for superficial considerations, but also because we’ve looked at the past record of the Chinese side – trying to exploit loopholes within the U.S. government, particularly by having the secretary of state and the national security adviser to tear each other down.” the official said.
He said the U.S. national security adviser met with Chinese officials along with the secretary of state to tell the Chinese that this tactic would not work for the Biden administration now; that the Biden administration would be consistent in its China Policy, whether privately or publicly.
On the surface, Yang and Wang’s meeting with Blinken and Sullivan is similar to the “two plus two” foreign minister and defense secretary meetings in Tokyo and Seoul that Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin just concluded. In fact, Yang Jiechi and Wang Yi are both leading diplomats, and Sullivan, the current national security adviser, was a senior diplomatic official in the past.
Communist Media Propaganda Cools Down Alaska Talks
Chinese Ambassador to Washington Cui Tiankai told the Chinese media on Wednesday that the United States should be disillusioned if it thinks Chinese officials are going to Alaska, a “snowy place” in the United States, to make compromises and concessions. He added that the Chinese Communist Party has no high expectations or illusions about the dialogue.
On the other hand, CGTN, the overseas channel of the Communist Party’s state media CCTV, tried to brand Alaska as a positive meeting place, not only mentioning the impromptu visit to Alaska by Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping, but also using the fact that Beijing and Washington are about the same distance away from Anchorage, Alaska, to try to make the Chinese side appear not to be at a disadvantage.
Xi had stopped in Alaska on his way Home from an informal meeting with then-President Donald Trump at the Sea Lake estate in 2017 and met with then-Governor Bill Walker.
Xi said Alaska is China’s “Shangri-La” and that “you will see an increase in tourism from China.
In addition, the official Communist Party announcement of the meeting emphasized that Yang Jiechi and Wang Yi were invited to visit Alaska. Strictly speaking, this is ostensibly true, and CCP leaders cannot visit the U.S. mainland without an invitation; but the CCP has been reaching out to Biden’s staff since late last year, seeking to quickly dispatch Yang Jiechi to the United States.
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