Optics hint at chasm in US-China ties
Blinken sought stability; Beijing pressed economy
An austere greeting on the airport tarmac in Beijing sans a red carpet. A stone-faced handshake from China’s top foreign policy official. A seat looking up at the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, perched at the head of a long table.
To international audiences, the optics of Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s two-day visit to Beijing barely raised any eyebrows. Foreign ministers are rarely, if ever, met with much fanfare at the airport. And an audience with a head of state alone is a sign of great importance and respect.
But to nationalist-leaning audiences in China, especially on social media, the scenes tell a different story. To them, Blinken arrived only after months of pleading for an invitation. And during his visit, he was schooled on respecting China’s interests and played supplicant to Xi. Chinese social media users gleefully noted that Blinken arrived on Father’s Day, the implication being — using the parlance of the Internet — that Xi was America’s daddy.
The nationalistic commentary in China around Blinken’s visit underscored a point that Xi made in his meeting with the top US diplomat Monday: “Major-country competition does not represent the trend of the times.” The translation: Surrounding China with security partners and cutting off its access to advanced technology is not healthy competition, but an invitation for conflict.
Xi’s rejection of the framing of US-China relations by the two most recent US presidents raises doubts about whether the world’s two superpowers can reach a strategic accommodation with each other.
“They apparently don’t buy into this framework at all,” said Bonnie Glaser, managing director of the Indo-Pacific program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. “That begs the question: Is it then possible to stabilize relations?”
It is unclear to what extent the state played a role in promoting the triumphant narrative online, though Chinese censors generally have broad controls to sway public opinion.
Yet, casting China as a strong and responsible power willing to lower tensions with a belligerent United States may help mask the less politically palatable reasons Beijing wants to reengage with Washington, analysts say. Chief among them is the need to stabilize the Chinese economy, which has been struggling to maintain a recovery after three years of punishing pandemic restrictions.
“The optics of Xi Jinping lecturing to a subordinate American secretary of state from the head of a boardroom table plays well to a domestic audience that China is a global power that not only demands, but receives respect from other great powers,” said Drew Thompson, a visiting senior research fellow at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore.
US officials say Blinken’s trip was necessary because maintaining regular high-level diplomacy between the world’s two superpower rivals — and its two largest economies and militaries — is critical to avoiding open conflict. Not only do the two governments seek stability in the relationship, but so do their allies and other nations. And diplomacy allows the two sides to make their views clear.
“If you want to stand up for American values on human rights and if you want to free detained Americans here or enlist China’s help on the fentanyl crisis, you can’t do it from the sidelines,” R. Nicholas Burns, the US ambassador in Beijing, said in an interview Tuesday. “You need to talk to them and press them as Secretary Blinken did on his visit here.
“The Chinese received the secretary with a great deal of dignity,” added Burns, who was in all of Blinken’s meetings.
Chinese officials, keen to turn the focus to commerce as an anchor in relations, had pushed for Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo to visit first, but US officials insisted that Blinken had to precede them. Now those other two Cabinet officials are expected to travel to Beijing this summer, as is John Kerry, the climate envoy.
Analysts say China hopes the talks can help bolster business confidence when many of the traditional levers of Chinese economic growth, such as real estate, are facing dramatic challenges. Moreover, China wants to underscore its opposition to trade restrictions that choke Chinese access to important technologies, such as advanced semiconductor chips.