US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met on Friday with a senior Chinese Communist Party official who is widely expected to be named Beijing’s next foreign minister, as tensions between the two countries escalate ahead of this weekend’s general election in Taiwan.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met on Friday with a senior Chinese Communist Party official who is widely expected to be named Beijing’s next foreign minister, as tensions between the two countries escalate ahead of this weekend’s general election in Taiwan.
Blinken held a private meeting with Liu Jianchao at the State Department on Friday, capping a series of meetings with U.S. and Chinese officials aimed at calming relations between the world’s two superpowers. Mr. Liu, who heads the Chinese Communist Party’s foreign affairs arm, is one of a small group of trusted top advisers to Chinese President Xi Jinping and is expected to become China’s next foreign minister, current and former U.S. officials say. Told. foreign policy.
Blinken’s meeting with Liu follows another recent milestone in U.S.-China relations. U.S. and Chinese military officials met this week at the Pentagon, their first formal dialogue in more than two years. Current and former officials also said that U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, will meet in February or March to maintain a steady pace of dialogue between the two countries. Both sides have said they plan to meet again in 2020, but neither side has announced when the meeting will take place. Such a meeting will be held.
The big question is how long this cooling-off period will last, with a new cold war brewing between the US and China, and if a new crisis in the relationship breaks out, such as a strong Chinese reaction to Taiwan’s upcoming general elections. , whether or not daily dialogue between U.S. and Chinese officials will continue. Further military confrontations are likely between the Chinese military and the Philippines, a close ally of the United States with which it has a formal defense treaty.
“It’s still early days. We don’t know if this stability will last,” said Bonnie Glaser, an expert on U.S.-China relations at the German Marshall Fund. “The question is, what happens if there is a crisis? I think the U.S.-China relationship remains very fragile and a lot of things could be disrupted.”
The bilateral relationship came after US President Joe Biden met with Xi on the sidelines of a major diplomatic summit in San Francisco last November and vowed to ease tensions and resume regular government dialogue. The steady drumbeat of talks continues. Prior to that, China had frozen diplomatic and military negotiations with the United States after then-US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in August 2022, a move that infuriated Beijing.
The Pentagon held two days of talks with senior Chinese military officials this week, the first such defense policy coordination talks between the two countries since 2021. He led discussions with China’s Major General Song Yanchao, deputy director of China’s International Military Cooperation Bureau within the Central Military Commission.
The Pentagon said the meeting “underscored the importance of maintaining open lines of communication between the military to prevent competition from escalating into conflict.”
One of the riskiest variables in US-China relations is Taiwan. The Chinese government views Taiwan, which is under independent rule, as its own sovereign territory, and many analysts, including some U.S. military officials, believe that China may move to take back Taiwan by force within the next few years. I am concerned that this may not be the case. In fact, during a meeting between Xi and Biden in November 2023, the Chinese leader reportedly told the US president that China intends to unify Taiwan with China, but the timing has not yet been determined. There is. He also said that China prefers peaceful unification rather than military unification.
Although the United States diplomatically recognizes Beijing rather than Taiwan through its so-called “One China” policy, it views Taiwan as an important democratic ally in the looming cold war between Washington and Beijing, and has close ties with Taiwan. Maintains military ties. Experts see the U.S.-China conflict over Taiwan as one of the most dangerous flashpoints in bilateral relations, with the country’s general election scheduled for this weekend and China’s reaction to it critical. I’m watching closely. The election is seen as a referendum on whether Taiwan will continue its hawkish and defiant approach to China, or seek a more tolerant approach. Those elections were expected to be at the top of the agenda during Friday’s meeting between Mr. Blinken and Mr. Liu, current and former officials said.
If Mr. Liu is confirmed as China’s next foreign minister, a decision likely to be announced at the National People’s Congress in March, current and former officials say, Mr. Liu’s The talks will lay the groundwork for direct relations with senior Biden administration officials during the period. It could be a turbulent year for U.S.-China relations.
Both countries are still reeling from the fallout from the reconnaissance balloon scandal that occurred in early 2023. At the time, a Chinese surveillance balloon was spotted flying near a hazardous nuclear facility over Montana, sparking a diplomatic rift between the two countries. Beyond the Taiwanese election, the US presidential election will be held in November. As far as foreign policy is concerned during the presidential campaign, all Republican candidates are calling for a stronger, more hawkish confrontation with China if they defeat Biden in the general election. Current and former U.S. officials say maintaining contact between the two countries throughout the election period is important to prevent escalating tensions, and the Sullivan-Wang relationship goes beyond the personal relationship between Biden and Xi. It is pointed out that this is the most important route of relationship. .
Mr. Wang currently serves as the foreign minister and director of the Foreign Affairs Office of the Communist Party of China, making him China’s top diplomat. Wang assumed the role of foreign minister in July 2023 after former foreign minister Qin Gang suddenly disappeared from public life and was dramatically ousted from the post. Before Mr. Qin was fired, there were rumors that he had an affair with a Chinese TV host and had fathered his child through his surrogate mother in the United States.
Despite the headwinds in the relationship, the Biden administration hopes to expand U.S.-China relations in the coming months, especially on the military front. U.S. officials say this week’s Pentagon meeting and Mr. Blinken’s meeting with Mr. Liu could pave the way for a so-called direct “hotline” between senior U.S. and Chinese military officials in the near future. Are expected. Based on the United States’ experience with the Soviet Union during the Cold War, the Biden administration believes that such cooperation between U.S. and Chinese military commanders is necessary to prevent military mishaps and miscalculations in the Asia-Pacific region from escalating into a full-scale military confrontation. We believe that a hotline is extremely important. .
There is one major gap in U.S.-China talks that remains unresolved. So far, the United States has made no progress in coercing Beijing into arms control talks, as China’s rapidly expanding nuclear arsenal is seen as another major security risk in the bilateral relationship. not present. According to a report released in late 2023, the Pentagon estimates that China will have more than 1,000 operational nuclear warheads by 2030.