WASHINGTON – With Biden’s government holding its highest-level meetings with China since its adoption, it enjoys broad dual support for a tough stance on Beijing, but is also skeptical about whether the talks will bring about real policy changes.
President Joe Biden, who called Chinese President Xi Jinping an ‘old friend’, finds himself at a crossroads in US policy while top officials meet in Alaska for a two-day summit. U.S. public opinion is overwhelmingly supportive of a confrontational attitude toward China. And both Democrats and Republicans now describe China as a serious threat, urging legislation to impose more sanctions on Beijing for human rights violations and to protect U.S. companies from China’s trade practices.
Biden’s government plans to use that rare consensus as leverage when Foreign Minister Antony Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan meet in Anchorage on Thursday and Friday with China’s leading diplomat, Yang Jiechi, and Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs, Wang Yi.
Senior administration officials said the U.S. plans to outline some specific areas where China needs to take steps to change course before the relationship can continue in a substantive way. Major US tensions include China’s increasingly aggressive military stance in the region, cyber intrusions and intellectual property theft, trade and economic practices and human rights violations, including actions in Hong Kong and Xinjiang.
“What we are looking for is more than words,” said a senior administration official.
Some Biden administration officials and lawmakers in Congress say they are looking for the same from Biden.
“The new government has elevated China in some of its early leadership. So it is there, at least on paper,” a senior intelligence official, who is an expert on Chinese military capabilities, told NBC News. “I hope, therefore, that we do not spend a lot of time diagnosing the problem, but that we start to be active in implementing solutions out here.”
Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., Told Fox News on Wednesday that Biden’s China strategy ‘is something to look out for’ and that he fears Beijing will lure us to an agreement that we believe is so important that we can not have China. walk from there. And then they will insist that we stop talking about Hong Kong, stop talking about Taiwan, stop talking about the Muslims. [in] labor camps, stop talking about these kinds of things. ‘
President Trump has brought unpredictability to the world stage. Pray not, and he dropped some of his predecessor’s harsh language towards Beijing while tackling a tougher line on human rights. But he did not abandon the Trump policy. Trump’s controversial tariffs on Chinese goods, for example, remain in place. The policy, like others, is still being reviewed, administrative officials said.
Even current senior government officials who have served in the Obama administration admit that the problems in the U.S. relationship with China extend beyond Trump.
“We inherited a very challenging situation from not only the previous government, but also a long way back,” said one of them.
In the run-up to the meeting in Alaska, Biden’s government sent an unmistakable signal to China that it would take a difficult line with Beijing and support US allies in Asia.
During a visit to Japan, Blinken warned against ‘coercion and aggression’ by Beijing and promised that the US “would push back if necessary”. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who joined Blinken for talks with Japanese counterparts in Tokyo, called China’s destabilizing actions’ in the Eastern and South China Seas.
“They make it very, very clear that they do not trust China,” said Michael Green, who oversaw China’s policies in the George W. Bush administration.
The messages and symbolism of Biden’s government this week, with high-profile visits to US allies, Japan and South Korea, were aimed at conveying to China that there will no longer be a conciliatory tone by the former Obama government was not used, and that Washington, according to Green, now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank, would rally allies to confront Beijing.
Green from the face-to-face conversations in Alaska is not going to be a love party.
Senior officials who briefed reporters ahead of the Anchorage meetings said they did not expect any policy statements after the meetings, which they described as one-off, not the start of a dialogue process with the Chinese. And they said there would be no joint declaration from the two countries thereafter, although such declarations are the norm for high-level diplomatic talks.
Instead, they said the goal is to get an idea of where the Chinese stand on key issues so they can take stock as soon as they return home, while Biden finalizes its broader China strategy. Officials in particular do not mention that China’s handling of Covid-19 is a major issue.
The meeting in Anchorage follows recent congressional hearings in Washington, during which a top military commander and experts warned that the United States was in danger of losing its military and technological advantage over Beijing, and that China was looking to international, rule-based to undermine. order.
The commander of the U.S. troops in the Pacific, adm. Philip Davidson told senators last week that the U.S. military’s force is being defended in light of China’s massive arms build-up, and that there is a risk that Beijing may try to force Taiwan within six months. to seize. years.
Experts have also told lawmakers that China is using its economic power to punish or coerce other governments, including Australia. Beijing has imposed tariffs on a growing list of imports from Australia after Canberra called for an international inquiry into how China handled the coronavirus outbreak.
In separate interviews with NBC News in recent days, two senior intelligence officials said they believe the U.S. government needs to significantly reorient its priorities to address what it sees as an unparalleled strategic threat to China, including shifting intelligence and military resources from the Middle East. to the Pacific Theater. Everyone said he saw signs that Biden’s government was willing to do the same.
One of them noted that the Obama administration was trying to turn the focus on Asia, but “it was never executed because we were still deeply involved in Afghanistan and Iraq.”
“Now I think it has become much more urgent, much more serious. We really have to come from the Middle East,” the official said. “We need to think about war with China because China is the only country that can fully challenge the United States.”