Yang’s speech to send US cooperation message

Washington doomed if Biden adopts Trump’s China policy: expert

Senior Chinese diplomats including a vice foreign minister and ambassador to the US have been sending a message of cooperation to the US in recent days, and on Tuesday morning ( Beijing time), a highly anticipated speech will be delivered by senior Chinese diplomat Yang Jiechi to a US audience, and Chinese experts said China will deliver its sincerity for cooperation but will also draw clear bottom lines.

To what extent US President Joe Biden can correct the problematic China policy made by the Trump administration will not just decide the future of China- US relations, but will also determine if the US would recover from the current mess or keep declining, experts said, noting that Biden should seize the opportunity to fix bilateral ties.

Yang, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and director of the Office of the Central Commission for Foreign Affairs, will speak on the current status of the bilateral ties and prospects for the future in his first speech to an American audience since the Biden administration took office.

Diao Daming, an expert on US studies at the Renmin University of China, said on Monday that “Yang will send a positive signal as always. Apart from drawing bottom lines and sending sincerity of cooperation.” Yang is also expected to bring new ideas or narratives about how to develop bilateral ties, experts said.

Lü Xiang, an expert of US studies with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, said that after the trade war and a series of confrontations in politics, ideology, COVID- 19 and security, China had been prepared for the worst- case scenario in China- US relations when the Trump administration was in office, and there is no reason for a experienced and sophisticated politician like Biden to make the situation even worse.

Trump, former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo and other politicians have tried everything to hit China, and Biden and his cabinet members should be aware that this kind of strategy is useless and harmful to the US. China is actively sending friendly messages to urge the new government to use the window of power transition to at least pull bilateral ties from the toxic atmosphere a little bit, said analysts.

However, some conservative forces are trying to lobby the Biden administration to inherit or even make a more hostile policy toward China. A “Longer Telegram” was released by the Washington- based think tank Atlantic Council on Friday that aims to give suggestions for the new US administration’s China strategy. The report, written by an anonymous “former senior government official with deep expertise and experience dealing with China,” identifies China’s rise as “the single most important challenge facing the US and the democratic world in the 21st century.”

Wang Wenbin, a spokesperson at the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said Monday that “the author of this ‘ telegram’ chose to release the report anonymously, which shows the darkness and cowardly mentality of some people in the US. The ‘ new cold war’ and ideological confrontation are against the trend of our time, and will win no support.”

“Yelling for regime change in China and trying to contain China are totally wishful thinking,” Wang said.