ANCHOR – The Biden government’s first face-to-face meeting with China ended Friday after a vivid demonstration of how the world’s two largest economic and technology powers are facing a growing gap of suspicion and disagreement over a range of issues affecting the global Will shape the landscape for years to come.
After an opening session on Thursday marked by mutual public accusations, the two sides left an Anchorage hotel on Friday without jointly expressing their willingness to work together, even in areas where both say they share common interests, from climate change until the rollback of North Korea’s nuclear arsenal.
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken argued that it was valuable to hear how differently Chinese President Biden and President Xi Jinping, who celebrated a cautious friendship a decade ago, now pursue their priorities.
“We know and knew that there are a number of areas where we are fundamentally at odds,” Blinken told journalists after the Chinese diplomats left the venue without making public statements or answering questions. “And it’s no surprise that when we addressed these issues clearly and directly, we received a defensive response.”
The extraordinary resentment exuded by China’s top diplomats in Alaska reflected a new militant and unapologetic China that was increasingly deprived of diplomatic pressure from the American presidential administrations.
Just as Washington’s views of China have changed after years of promoting the country’s economic integration, so have Beijing’s perception of the United States and the privileged place in the world it has long held. The Americans, in their view, have neither an overwhelming reservoir of global influence nor the power to use it against China.
This has made China more confident in pursuing its goals openly and blatantly – from human rights issues in Hong Kong and Xinjiang, to territorial disputes with India and Japan and others in the South China Sea, to the most controversial fate of Taiwan’s self-governing democracy, which China claims for itself.
While China still faces tremendous challenges at home and around the world, its leaders now pretend history is on their side.
“These strategic exchanges were open, constructive and helpful,” said China’s top diplomat Yang Jiechi in comments that were broadcast on Chinese state television. “Of course there are big arguments between us. China will vigorously defend national sovereignty, security and development interests, and China’s development and growing strength are unstoppable. “
Although most of the discussions in Anchorage took place behind closed doors, the video of the opening session provided ample evidence of the tense start to the meetings. Mr. Yang held a 16-minute ceremony accusing Mr. Blinken and Jake Sullivan, Mr. Biden’s National Security Advisor, of condescension and hypocrisy.
China’s more aggressive diplomatic stance is likely to fuel tension with the United States, which has declared China itself a national security rival. China’s persistent views have already surfaced on its borders and in the surrounding waters, where it fought Indian troops and threatened ships from several countries including Japan, Malaysia and Vietnam over the past year.
The American delegation, Blinken said, had arrived in Alaska to discuss issues that China considered taboo because they concerned the country’s internal affairs. These included American objections to human rights violations against minority Uyghurs in China’s western Xinjiang province – which Mr. Blinken has described as “genocide” – and China’s application of a new national security law to suppress political disagreements in Hong Kong.
Mr Blinken and Mr Sullivan tried to downplay the sharpness that flared up in front of television cameras on Thursday evening at the opening hour of the two-day event.
“We knew we were coming in, we knew we were going out,” said Mr. Sullivan. “And we’re going back to Washington to take stock of where we are.”
Blinken said a discussion of China’s cyber activities also generated an irritated reaction: while the United States has not yet identified a country as responsible for a giant Microsoft Exchange system hack used by tens of thousands of government agencies and corporations, Microsoft has said It was a Chinese government sponsored operation.
Mr Blinken said “our interests overlap” on diplomacy with Iran, North Korea and Afghanistan, as well as on climate change. However, there was no shared declaration of determination to work together on any of these issues, the diplomatic friendliness that routinely seals such high-level meetings.
Afterward, senior Biden government officials insisted the talks would be useful in gaining insight into Beijing’s views, which could help develop a new American strategy to compete with China in a variety of areas. The officials, who informed journalists on condition that they could not be identified, called the private conversations civil.
A senior official said Mr Blinken focused Friday’s closing talks on human rights as well as detaining foreigners in China and using a practice known as travel bans to prevent them from leaving the country.
While this was not the first irritable meeting between Chinese and Americans, the balance of power between the two countries has changed.
For decades, China turned economically and militarily from weak positions to American governments. This sometimes forced it to comply with American demands, even when it was reluctant to release imprisoned human rights activists or to accept Washington’s terms for joining the World Trade Organization.
China today feels much more confident in its ability to challenge the United States and press for its own vision of international cooperation. It is a trust that China’s leader since 2012, Xi Jinping, has welcomed, who used the phrase, “The East is rising and the West is falling.”
Beijing’s view has been fueled by the coronavirus epidemic, which has largely tamed China at home, and internal political divisions in the United States. Mr. Yang highlighted both in his remarks on Thursday.
“The human rights challenges facing the United States are deeply ingrained,” Yang said, citing the Black Lives Matter movement against police brutality. “It is important that we manage our respective affairs well rather than diverting the guilt away from someone else in this world.”
The change in China’s strategy isn’t just rhetorical or “stellar” to a domestic audience, as suggested by a senior official traveling with Mr. Blinken.
Regarding the litany of issues Mr Blinken raised before and during the talks – from Hong Kong to Xinjiang, from human rights to technology – China’s leaders have refused to give a reason. They have done so despite international criticism and even tightened the punitive measures of the Trump and now the Biden administrations.
In the last round, the State Department announced this week that it would sanction 24 Chinese officials for their role in eroding Hong Kong’s electoral system. The timing of the move, just as the Chinese were preparing to leave for Alaska, added to the sharpness.
“This is not the way you greet your guests,” said China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi in remarks in Alaska that were as clear as Mr. Yang’s.
The Biden government’s stated strategy for dealing with China was to form coalitions of countries to confront and deter their behavior. Mr Biden’s team has argued that while President Trump correctly diagnosed China as a growing threat, its erratic policies and ill-treatment of allies are undermining efforts to counter it.
How successful the new strategy will be remains to be seen, but for the past few years China has pretended to be impervious to outrage at its measures, which makes the task all the more difficult.
For example, the expansion of international condemnation last year over the introduction of a new national security law to curb disagreement in Hong Kong did nothing to stop a new law dismantling the territory’s electoral system this year.
China also opted Friday to begin its legal proceedings against two Canadians arrested more than two years ago and charged with espionage in general in retaliation for American efforts to extradite an executive from telecommunications giant Huawei for fraud-related charges Sales was viewed in Iran.
It was noticed that Mr. Yang, a seasoned diplomat and a member of the ruling Politburo of the Communist Party of China, used what he said to say that neither the United States nor the West by and large had a monopoly on international public opinion .
This is reflected in China’s successful efforts to use international forums such as the United Nations Human Rights Council to counter condemnation of measures such as mass detention and re-education programs in Xinjiang, the predominantly Muslim region of western China.
“I don’t think the vast majority of countries in the world would recognize that the universal values held by the United States or that the opinion of the United States could represent international public opinion,” Yang said. “And these countries would not recognize that the rules serve as the basis for international order for a small number of people.”
Mr. Yang also questioned Mr. Blinken’s allegation that he had recently heard concerns from American allies about forced Chinese behavior. He noted that the two countries Mr. Blinken was visiting – Japan and South Korea – were China’s second and third largest trading partners, showcasing the growing influence of its economic power.
The confrontation played a good role among local audiences in China, as measured by reactions to the country’s carefully censored social media sites. “Who but China would dare to put the United States in such a corner on American territory these days?” A Weibo user wrote approvingly under a video of Mr. Yang’s remarks.
While American officials said the temperature of meetings in Alaska had dropped behind closed doors, few officials or experts on either side are hoping for a significant improvement in relations. “By and large, this negotiation is only for the two sides to put all the cards on the table, for the two sides to see how big and deep the differences are,” said Wu Qiang, an independent political analyst in Beijing. In fact, however, it will not help bring about reconciliation or mitigation. “
Chris Buckley contributed to the coverage from Sydney, Australia, and Claire Fu contributed to the research.
