US Secretary of State Antony Blinken faced tough talks on China this week, as Washington stepped up pressure on its main rival on everything from defense to the economy ahead of the election.
The United States and China are on paper rebuilding relations after the meeting between Joe Biden and Xi Jinping in San Francisco last year.
However, the two countries with the largest economies in the world are still at odds over trade, technology, Taiwan and the Ukraine war.
“Blinken’s journey is not an easy task,” Wu Xinbo, director of the Center for American Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai, told AFP.
For China, the main problems are trade and economics.
The United States in recent weeks has stepped up pressure on China, with Biden calling for increased steel and aluminum tariffs against Beijing as he courts lower-class voters ahead of November’s election.
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The US government earlier this month also announced it was launching an investigation into China’s trade practices in the shipbuilding, maritime and logistics sectors, sparking an angry reaction in Beijing.
Although Biden has said there is no trade war with Beijing, China views US efforts to curb its industrial production as tantamount to such efforts.
“The stability in this relationship is, in some ways, an illusion,” said Jake Werner, of the East Asia Program at Washington’s Quincy Institute.
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Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen also refused to rule out punishing China for industrial overcapacity – as Beijing’s subsidies lead to overproduction and lower export prices.
“Beijing views this expansion of control as a symbol of America’s efforts to hinder China’s rise,” said Ryan Hass, a fellow at the Brookings Institution on China.
This month, a US congressional committee accused Chinese authorities of “directly” subsidizing the manufacture and export of ingredients used to make fentanyl — the synthetic painkiller that is behind the overdose epidemic in the US.
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The US Senate approved a bill that would require TikTok to be divested from its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, or shut out of the American market.
Officials in the US and other Western countries have raised concerns over TikTok’s popularity among young people, and accused TikTok of allowing Beijing to collect data and spy on users. It has 170 million users in the United States alone.
These critics also say TikTok is beholden to Beijing and is a channel for spreading propaganda. China and its companies strongly deny these claims.
“Negotiations during Blinken’s visit will be held in a very tense atmosphere,” said Lyu Xiang, an expert on Sino-US relations at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS).
“Can China stop development (to assuage US fears)? Impossible,” Lyu added.
Middle East, Ukraine, Russia, Taiwan
Blinken, in his second visit to China in less than a year, also accused Beijing of fueling the Ukraine war by supplying components to Russia that it used for its military expansion – a claim Beijing condemned on Tuesday as “baseless”.
US officials describe a major Chinese push as helping Russia carry out its greatest militarization since Soviet times.
“If China on the one hand intends to have positive and friendly relations with Europe and other countries, on the other hand they cannot pose the greatest threat to European security since the end of the Cold War,” Blinken said last time. week.
But Washington also hopes Blinken can persuade China to use its influence with Iran to stem the impact of the Israel-Hamas war.
But Beijing has repeatedly insisted that Washington should push Israel to agree to a ceasefire – and is concerned about Washington’s military alliances in Asia.
Lyu said that the recent joint statement between Japan, the Philippines and the United States was “the most hostile political statement toward China since the end of the Cold War.”
Also on the list is a perennial source of strife between Taiwan, a self-governing democracy claimed by Beijing, and China angered by US arms sales to Taipei.
Biden and Xi’s meeting in November sparked a wave of official optimism, but Fudan University’s Wu said that since then, Beijing feels that Washington has “failed to act quickly” to address China’s concerns.
“The US side thinks as long as things are stable and not too volatile, then it’s OK,” Wu said. “The Chinese side believes that stabilizing relations alone is not enough.” (AFP/Z-3)
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