Yang Jiechi (center), member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC), and Wang Yi, foreign minister of the CPC, at the U.S.-China high-level talks in Alaska. (March 18, 2021)
The highly anticipated high-level U.S.-China diplomatic talks in the Alaskan capital of Anchorage, Alaska, descended into a heated exchange of criticism shortly after they kicked off Thursday (March 18). A Republican congressional leader criticized the behavior of Chinese Communist Party officials as “revealing a lack of self-awareness” in a post immediately following the first meeting between U.S. and Chinese officials.
At Thursday’s first meeting, what had been scheduled to be a brief public opening statement turned into a rare off-the-record, hour-long battle between U.S. and Chinese officials, with the U.S. side accusing the Chinese Communist Party of threatening the international order and the Chinese side criticizing U.S. hegemony and hypocrisy on human rights issues.
During the back-and-forth, Yang Jiechi, a member of the Chinese Communist Party’s Politburo in charge of foreign affairs, even blurted out “you are not qualified to say in front of China that you talk to China from a position of strength” and “have we suffered less from foreigners? The House Foreign Affairs Committee’s Ranking Republican on Foreign Affairs
Rep. Micharl McCaul (R-TX), the ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, responded immediately Thursday evening EST, criticizing the actions of Chinese Communist Party officials.
“What the Chinese Communist Party has done reveals a regime that lacks self-awareness and projects its own weakness and callousness onto others,” McCaul tweeted, “A regime that clearly has no plans to change its ways. Strength and action are the only things the Chinese Communist Party can understand anymore.”
The unprecedented exchange of sharp words between U.S. and Chinese diplomatic leadership officials in front of the media before substantive talks even began also underscores the deep and deeply fraught bilateral differences between the world’s two most powerful nations. Many analysts believe this may signal that the complex and frosty relationship between Washington and Beijing cannot be easily melted anytime soon.
Antony Blinken (D-N.Y.) highlighted deep U.S. concerns about Chinese Communist Party actions in areas including Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Taiwan, cyber attacks on the United States and economic coercion against U.S. allies. Blinken said these actions invariably threaten the rules-based order that maintains global stability.
U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan went on to speak, saying they will make clear during the talks that “our overriding U.S. priority is to ensure that our approach to world affairs and our approach to China’s affairs benefits the American people and protects the interests of our allies and partners.”
“We do not seek conflict, but we welcome fierce competition, and we will always defend our principles, defend our people and our friends,” Sullivan said.
When it was China’s turn to speak, Yang Jiechi spent 15 minutes raising various grievances against the U.S. side, blaming the U.S. for waging wars that have caused many lives and unrest in the world. He also criticized the U.S. for its foreign promotion of human rights and democracy.
He said, “The human rights problems that exist in the U.S. are deep-rooted and have not existed for the past four years, the massacre of black people, this problem has existed for a long Time, so I think our two countries had better mind their own business and not shift the spearhead and shift the unresolved domestic problems to the international arena.”
Yang also accused the U.S. of being the champion of cyber attacks in terms of capability and use.
Republican U.S. Rep. Andy Barr (R-KY) told a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing Friday (March 19) to discuss the Indo-Pacific strategy that sharp criticism of the Chinese Communist Party is not racism, but a policy issue, a foreign policy issue. He said, “There are moral differences between the United States and the Chinese Communist government.”
Rep. Barr asked former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs Randy Schriver, who was present to testify at the hearing, which was held online via video message, “At the U.S.-China meeting in Alaska yesterday, the Chinese delegation tried to portray the United States as hypocritical because we directly raised some international concerns about the Chinese Communist Party. While I know the U.S. has had a very difficult year and we have our own problems, I do want to ask you a few questions to highlight the differences, the moral differences between the U.S. and China. Is the United States currently ethnically cleansing its own people in state-run detention camps? Yes or no?”
“No,” Shreveport replied briefly.
“Is the United States currently stealing intellectual property from companies doing business here and then providing that technology to our military? Yes or no?” Barr continued to ask.
“Certainly no federally supported ones,” Shreveport said.
“Is the United States imprisoning people who are speaking out for democracy and human rights? Yes or no?”
“No.”
“We are not. As we discuss the way forward in the Indo-Pacific, I want to emphasize these differences, and we have to make it clear to our partners and allies that it has to be morally clear what the CCP is like and what kind of behavior they have,” Barr continued.
“Frankly, the moral superiority of the Western way, the Western approach to open free and democratic societies, versus the closed communist police state, the Chinese Communist Party. I don’t think it’s racist rhetoric, it’s a statement about the challenges we face, it’s about taking a sober look at the problem.”
“The tone [of the Chinese Communist Party] seems to be different, and now the Communist Party is not just trying to be on par with us, they want to be superior,” said Michael Pillsbury, a China expert and director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for China Strategy, the Wall Street Journal reported March 19. He called for the United States to seek “more leverage” in dealing with the Communist Party.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), a Republican U.S. senator who has often taken a hard line on the Communist Party, also tweeted that the U.S. government should adopt a new strategy to address the Communist challenge.
“The behavior of the CCP delegation is completely unacceptable,” Cotton tweeted Friday, “It’s time for the Biden Administration to adopt a strategy to defeat the CCP.”
Recent Comments