Biden left waiting by the phone as China refuses to play any more

With no real desire to reach out, those at the White House are like aliens from sci-fi comedy ‘Mars Attacks!’ who come in peace but want to kill

President Joe Biden says a “thaw” in US relations with China is coming. He clearly expects Beijing to be a cheap date and just waits by the phone. Unsurprisingly, the Chinese decline to play along.

At issue is a rejected meeting requested by US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin to meet his Chinese counterpart, General Li Shangfu, at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore. The problem is that Li, who was in charge of weapon procurements as part of the Chinese army modernisation before his promotion, has been sanctioned since 2018 by the previous US administration of Donald Trump.

His crime? The purchase of Su-35 combat aircraft and S-400 missile system equipment from Russia. How is that any of America’s business? Because such arms transfers are prohibited under US sanctions laws. They are of the unilateral kind that say, “We do it because we can.”

It says it wants to maintain the status quo in the Taiwan Strait, but then keeps poking Beijing’s red line

The Chinese side has made it known that any such top military meeting rests on the United States lifting the sanctions against Li. The US State Department responded by saying “sanctions do not necessarily prohibit sanctioned persons from meeting with US government officials”. How nice!

This was followed by another State Department statement that confirmed it would not lift the sanctions against Li. So Beijing got a bit annoyed and predictably rejected a meeting with Austin.

The Pentagon then joined the Washington chorus. As quoted by the Voice of America, a spokesman said “while General Li remains blocked from any US property interests, financial transfers, payments or foreign exchange under US jurisdiction due to current sanctions, President Joe Biden’s administration continues to seek open lines of communication with PRC military leaders to ensure competition does not spill into conflict”. That’s very thoughtful.

In effect, the Pentagon spokesman is saying that the Chinese are being small-minded and endangering world peace over some trifle sanctions. The two sides have not had a top-level tete-a-tete for more than six months and accidents can happen, what with so much US military hardware encircling the Chinese coastlines and flying outside its airspace.

But suppose we reverse the situation. According to data compiled by the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, the US sold weapons last year to a whopping 142 countries, of which at least 48 were classified as autocratic. So much for Biden’s declaration that the world is locked in an existential struggle between autocracies and democracies led by the US!

But I digress. With so many US arms sales and transfers, Beijing could easily have found an excuse to sanction someone like Austin. How might the Americans respond to such an act of hostility? But the real problem goes beyond sanctions against Li. It’s the consistent pattern of the Biden administration to say one thing and then do the opposite.

It says it wants to maintain the status quo in the Taiwan Strait, but then keeps poking at Beijing’s red line. It says it is fine with China’s economic rise but then rallies allies to disrupt its economy, especially in the hi-tech sector with the so-called chip war.

Almost in the same breath, Biden declared an imminent thaw and then turned the official Group of Seven communique into a full-frontal attack on a full range of issues, from Beijing’s supposed “coercive behaviour”, which the G7 countries also engage in, to criticising its stance on Ukraine, to which they have been supplying all the weapons. The mainstream media then followed the Biden party line which typically portrays the US as being open to diplomacy and faults China for being recalcitrant.

There is no real commitment from the US to reach out, but more like playing a public relations game in which the punchline is always, “The ball is in your court”. After a few rounds, the Chinese have caught on and don’t want to play any more.

Biden and his lieutenants are starting to look like those aliens in the sci-fi comedy Mars Attacks!, in which their leader declares they “come in peace” and then proceeds to obliterate everyone.