China’s top diplomatic official Yang Jiechi warned the United States during talks in Alaska: “The United States is not qualified to say in front of China that you talk to China from a position of strength …… because the Chinese don’t eat that.” Analysts point out that the Chinese do not eat this, and that strength and action are the only language they understand.
As the U.S. continues to advance its position of strength in the EU and NATO, strength is the best way to talk to China
After concluding talks with Chinese officials, Secretary of State Blinken then traveled to Europe and NATO to repair relations with the EU and NATO. Exploring common measures to deal with China will be one of the key items on Blinken’s agenda during his visit to Europe. Blinken on Wednesday urged NATO allies to work with the United States to strengthen their resistance to Beijing. “Beijing’s coercive behavior threatens our common security and prosperity,” he said.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Tuesday that Europe and North American allies are well positioned to work together to address the rise and challenges of China if NATO stands united.
Consulting with allies and partners and forming a united front against China is at the heart of the Biden administration’s policy toward China, analysts said, and is where U.S. strength lies, and strength in numbers, and the Chinese respect only strength.
Barry Pavel, director of the Atlantic Council’s Center for Strategy and Security , told VOA, “It’s much harder for China to respond when countries come together and form a unified decision. They won’t be able to just bully other countries. …… Only when there is serious backlash and toppling back is it possible for China to change course. The result is clearly different. When it comes to key issues, China only respects strength, and when it sees weakness, it takes advantage of it. That’s why we’re facing the situation we’re in today.”
Pavel said Chinese leader Xi Jinping had made a personal promise to then-U.S. President Barack Obama that he would not militarize the islands in the South China Sea, but Xi did not keep his promise. Pavel believes this should be more effective when the U.S., Canada, Europe, Taiwan, Australia and India come together to put China back on top.
China is very good at divide and conquer, he said. They try to isolate countries and impose their own agendas on other countries by going one-on-one.
He told VOA, “Once China realizes that the United States is really dealing with China from a position of strength, the U.S.-China relationship will return to a state where the toughest issues can be managed and cooperation can be explored.”
Since taking office, the Biden Administration has emphasized that allies are America’s greatest asset. In his first major foreign policy speech in office on March 3, Blinken said the United States must work with allies and partners in dealing with the Chinese challenge “because our united strength makes it harder for China to ignore.”
He added that Washington will compete with China when it should, cooperate when it can and confront when necessary, but noted that in either form, “we have to engage China from a position of strength.”
On March 22, U.S. allied diplomacy looked to be in play for the first Time. On that day, the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom and Canada announced sanctions actions against Chinese officials over human rights issues in China’s Xinjiang.
China responded swiftly, announcing sanctions against 10 individuals and four entities in Europe, including several members of the European Parliament and a number of leading European think tanks and academics.
In the latest development, the European Parliament canceled a deliberative meeting on the China-EU investment agreement. On Tuesday, the EU’s trade policy chief warned that China’s decision to escalate the sanctions dispute could jeopardize a market access agreement. China reached the China-EU investment agreement with Europe before the Biden administration took office, a deal that had been seen as a major obstacle to repairing the transatlantic partnership under the Biden administration.
In fact, shortly after Yang Jiechi’s speech, U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), the ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, immediately responded by saying, “Strength and action are the only things the Chinese Communist Party can understand anymore.”
Ryan Hass, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Foreign Policy Program, told the Voice of America on Tuesday that the Biden administration will not change its policy toward China because Yang Jiechi thinks it’s appropriate. China should know that issues such as Xinjiang, Taiwan and Hong Kong are about American values.
The scholar, who served in the Obama administration, said, “I understand Yang Jiechi’s desire to have these issues discussed in closed-door meetings, but he has been in the United States long enough to understand that we have always brought up loudly, repeatedly and consistently in the face of what we see as our values. And we’ll continue to do so.”
China not a behemoth, U.S. still the more powerful party
The Brookings Institution on Tuesday held a briefing on Ryan Ho’s new book, “Stronger: Adapting America’s China Strategy in an Age of Competitive Interdependence Interdependence) held a launch event. The book was published March 9.
Ryan Ho said one of the goals of his book is to show that the United States remains the stronger party in the U.S.-China relationship.
He explained that the United States has a strong geographic advantage, with two oceans separating it from other countries to the east and west, and countries friendly to the United States to the north and south. The U.S. political system is resilient and self-correcting, and even though it has weathered storms, it is largely intact. The U.S. economy remains strong, with a gross domestic product that is $7 trillion more than China’s, and so on.
He believes that many Americans don’t realize how strong their country is because “democracies usually exaggerate their problems, while autocracies brag about their strengths.”
In China, Chinese leader Xi Jinping believes the current world situation is “rising in the east and falling in the west” and that “time and momentum are on China’s side.”
In his book, Ryan specifically warns Americans against the “behemoth syndrome” – seeing China’s power but not its vulnerability. This, he argues, creates anxiety, which breeds insecurity, and insecurity triggers overreaction.
The term “behemoth syndrome” comes from former U.S. Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger. He served as secretary of defense during the Nixon and Ford administrations. He warned that U.S. policymakers tended to see rival Soviet Union as a “behemoth,” believing it was not only big but also brainy. He said U.S. policymakers seem to be suffering from a similar syndrome, the danger of which is that they tend to be more defensive than offensive in their decisions.
China’s current problems are many, and some could even be described as enormous, according to Ryan Ho. Look at their geography, they are surrounded by 14 countries, they have territorial disputes in five places, and four of them have nuclear weapons,” he said. Their geography is the most complex of any major country. Then look at their Food and energy security, they don’t have enough natural resources to provide enough food or enough fuel for their economy and have to rely on external imports. Their navy is not strong enough to protect sea lanes and traffic. When it comes to national cohesion, if you look around China, you’ll find problems in any direction: Hong Kong, with tensions; Tibet, with challenges; Xinjiang, where they’re creating future problems; and Inner Mongolia, which also has ethnic problems.”
China’s problems go beyond that, he said: its political system is becoming increasingly rigid, its population is aging, its debt is growing and so on.
What happens in Alaska will be the “new normal” in U.S.-China relations, Ryan said. Like it or not, he said, the two countries’ fates are “tied together” because they are both fiercely competitive and interdependent.
He said the future of U.S.-China relations is like the Alaska talks, where the two countries will have to sit down and talk about issues of mutual concern after the war of words.
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