Blinken Shrunken
Chinese readout of Xi-Blinken meeting, US transcript of Blinken remarks, US allies are increasingly uneasy
UPDATE: Chinese President Xi Jinping met with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken at the Great Hall of the People on Monday. Noting that the world is developing and the times are changing, Xi said the world needs a generally stable China-U.S. relationship, and whether the two countries can find the right way to get along bears on the future and destiny of humanity.
Blinken on Taiwan; “I reiterated the longstanding U.S. “one China” policy. That policy has not changed. It’s guided by the Taiwan Relations Act, the three Joint Communiqués, the Six Assurances. We do not support Taiwan independence. We remain opposed to any unilateral changes to the status quo by either side.”
The central security challenge is how to keep the geopolitical competition between the United States and China from undermining the economic cooperation upon which their prosperity and the global economy depends.
Xi meets Blinken in Beijing
Chinese President Xi Jinping met with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken at the Great Hall of the People on Monday. Noting that the world is developing and the times are changing, Xi said the world needs a generally stable China-U.S. relationship, and whether the two countries can find the right way to get along bears on the future and destiny of humanity.
Xi pointed out that the vast expanse of the Earth is big enough to accommodate the respective development and common prosperity of China and the United States. The Chinese, like the Americans, are dignified, confident and self-reliant people, Xi said, adding that they both have the right to pursue a better life. "The common interests of the two countries should be valued, and their respective success is an opportunity instead of a threat to each other."
Xi said the international community is generally concerned about the current state of China-U.S. relations. "It does not want to see conflict or confrontation between China and the United States or choose sides between the two countries, and it expects the two countries to coexist in peace and have friendly and cooperative relations."
The two countries should act with a sense of responsibility for history, for the people and for the world, and handle China-U.S. relations properly, Xi said, adding that in this way, they may contribute to global peace and development, and help make the world, which is changing and turbulent, more stable, certain and constructive.
Xi stressed that major-country competition does not represent the trend of the times, still less can it solve America's own problems or the challenges facing the world. China respects U.S. interests and does not seek to challenge or displace the United States, and in the same vein, the United States needs to respect China and must not hurt China's legitimate rights and interests, said Xi. "Neither side should try to shape the other side by its own will, still less deprive the other side of its legitimate right to development."
Xi said China always hopes to see a sound and steady China-U.S. relationship and believes that the two major countries can overcome various difficulties and find the right way to get along based on mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation, calling on the U.S. side to adopt a rational and pragmatic attitude and work with China in the same direction.
Xi pointed out that the two sides need to remain committed to the common understandings he and President Biden reached in Bali, and translate the positive statements into actions so as to stabilize and improve China-U.S. relations.
For his part, Blinken conveyed President Biden's greetings to President Xi. He said President Biden believes that the United States and China have an obligation to responsibly manage their relations, adding that this is in the interests of the United States, China and the world.
The United States is committed to returning to the agenda set by the two presidents in Bali, Blinken said, adding that the United States stands by the commitments made by President Biden, namely that the United States does not seek a new Cold War, it does not seek to change China's system, its alliances are not directed at China, it does not support "Taiwan independence," and it does not seek conflict with China.
The U.S. side looks forward to having high-level engagement with the Chinese side, keeping open lines of communication, responsibly managing differences, and pursuing dialogue, exchanges and cooperation, he added.
Xi asked Blinken to convey his regards to President Biden.
Wang Yi and Qin Gang, among others, were present at the meeting.
Read Chinese version here and English here.
Blinken Post Script
I want to begin by expressing my gratitude to Ambassador Burns, to our entire Mission China, with whom I’ve had an opportunity to spend time over the past couple of days. This team serves at one of the most important posts in the world at a critical moment, and I could not be prouder of how they represent our country.
Over the past two-and-a-half years, the United States has taken a series of purposeful, strategic steps – both at home and abroad – to strengthen our country and our standing around the world.
We’ve made historic investments in our infrastructure, technology, industrial capacity, competitiveness. We’ve deepened our engagement and alignment with allies and partners around the world in ways that would have been unimaginable a few years ago.
That’s the backdrop for the relationship between the United States and the People’s Republic of China – one of the most consequential in the world. Both the United States and China have an obligation to manage this relationship responsibly. Doing so serves the best interests of the United States, of China, indeed, of the world.
We are clear-eyed about the challenges posed by the PRC. The United States will advance a vision for the future that we share with so many others: a free, open, stable, and prosperous world with countries upholding and updating the rules-based order that has for years safeguarded peace and security globally.
To shape that future, we start with diplomacy – including with China. I came to Beijing to strengthen high-level challenges of communication, to make clear our positions and intentions in areas of disagreement, and to explore areas where we might work together when our interests align on shared transnational challenges. And we did all of that.
Here in Beijing, I had an important conversation with President Xi Jinping. And I had candid, substantive, and constructive discussions with my counterparts Director Wang Yi and State Councilor Qin Gang. I appreciate the hospitality extended by our hosts.
In every meeting, I stressed that direct engagement and sustained communication at senior levels is the best way to responsibly manage our differences and ensure that competition does not veer into conflict. And I heard the same from my Chinese counterparts. We both agree on the need to stabilize our relationship.
During those meetings, we had a robust conversation about regional and global challenges. That includes Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. I reiterated that we would welcome China playing a constructive role along with other nations to work toward a just peace, based on the principles of the United Nations Charter. We also spoke about North Korea’s increasingly reckless actions and rhetoric. All members of the international community have an interest in encouraging the DPRK to act responsibly, to stop launching missiles, to start engaging on its nuclear program. And China is in a unique position to press Pyongyang to engage in dialogue and to end its dangerous behavior.
I raised U.S. concerns – shared by a growing number of countries – about the PRC’s provocative actions in the Taiwan Strait, as well as in the South and East China Seas. On Taiwan, I reiterated the longstanding U.S. “one China” policy. That policy has not changed. It’s guided by the Taiwan Relations Act, the three Joint Communiqués, the Six Assurances. We do not support Taiwan independence. We remain opposed to any unilateral changes to the status quo by either side. We continue to expect the peaceful resolution of cross-strait differences. We remain committed to meeting our responsibilities under the Taiwan Relations Act, including making sure that Taiwan has the ability to defend itself. We also spoke about a range of bilateral issues, including continuing to develop principles to guide our relationship, as discussed by President Biden and President Xi in Bali late last year.
We exchanged views on our respective economic policies, including our concerns about China’s unfair treatment of U.S. companies. During my meeting today with U.S. business leaders, who are operating in China, I heard about the problems that U.S. businesses are facing – including recent punitive actions against American firms. I also heard that U.S. companies want to continue and indeed grow their businesses here. And so, in my meetings, I sought to clarify any misperceptions or misunderstandings about our approach.
There is a profound difference, for the United States and for many other countries, between de-risking and decoupling. Our countries traded more over the last year – in fact, more than ever over the last year – nearly $700 billion. Healthy and robust economic engagement benefits both the United States and China. And as Secretary Yellen testified before Congress last week, it would be, as she put it, disastrous for us to decouple and stop all trade and investment with China.
We are for de-risking and diversifying. That means investing in our own capacities and in secure, resilient supply chains; pushing for level playing fields for our workers and our companies; defending against harmful trade practice; and protecting our critical technologies so that they aren’t used against us. I made clear that we’ll continue to take targeted actions that are necessary to protect U.S. national security.
In my meetings, I also discussed human rights. The United States and the international community remain deeply concerned about PRC human rights violations, including in Xinjiang, in Tibet, and Hong Kong. I also specifically raised wrongfully detained U.S. citizens and those facing exit bans. There is no higher priority for me than the safety and well-being of U.S. citizens overseas, and I’ll continue to work intensively to secure their release and their safe return home.
As we work to address our differences, the United States is prepared to cooperate with China in areas where we have mutual interests, including climate, macroeconomic stability, public health, food security, counternarcotics.
On food security, we believe China can play a key role in alleviating global food insecurity. I underscore the importance of supporting a long-term expansion of the Black Sea Grain Initiative, which has facilitated the export of almost 32 million tons of grain from Ukraine; with approximately 18 million tons going to developing countries. A long-term expansion is critical for avoiding food shortages in the some of the poorest, most food-insecure countries in the world, as well as price surges.
I raised as a priority the issue of synthetic opioids and fentanyl, a crisis in the United States. Fentanyl is the number-one killer of Americans aged 18 to 49. I made clear that we need much greater cooperation to address this critical issue. We agreed to explore setting up a working group or joint effort so that we can shut off the flow of precursor chemicals, which helped fuel this crisis and a growing number of deaths.
Finally, we discussed the importance of strengthening people-to-people exchanges between students, scholars, business travelers. That benefits our citizens, our economies, and our relationship. Today, I had an opportunity to meet with an impressive group of alumni from those exchange programs. In my meetings, we discussed enhancing educational exchanges and we committed to work to increase direct flights between our countries.
To continue dialogue on these and other important issues, I would expect additional visits by senior U.S. officials to China over the coming weeks. And we welcome further visits by Chinese officials to the United States. To that end, I invited State Councilor and Foreign Minister Qin Gang to visit Washington, and he agreed to come at a mutually suitable time.
A little later this evening, I leave for London to attend the Ukraine Recovery Conference, and I’ll also have an opportunity there to brief allies and partners on this visit and to continue to strengthen our alignment.
We have no illusions about the challenges of managing this relationship. There are many issues on which we profoundly, even vehemently disagree. We will always take the best course of action to advance the interests of the American people. But the United States has a long history of successfully managing complicated, consequential relationships through diplomacy. It’s the responsibility of both countries to find a path forward – and it’s in both our interests, and the interests of the world, that we do so.
With regard to crisis communications and military-to-military channels, this is also something that I raised repeatedly during this trip. I think it’s absolutely vital that we have these kind of communications, military to military. That imperative, I think, was only underscored by recent incidents that we saw in the air and on the seas. And at this moment, China has not agreed to move forward with that. I think that’s an issue that we have to keep working on. It is very important that we restore those channels. If we agree that we have a responsibility to manage this relationship responsibly, if we agree that it’s in our mutual interests to make sure that the competitive aspects of the relationship don’t veer into conflict, then surely we can agree and see the need for making sure that the channels of communication that we’ve both said are necessary to do that include military-to-military channels.
So this is something that we’re going to keep working on, and as I said, there’s no immediate progress, but it is a continued priority for us.
Read full transcript here.
US Allies Uneasy
By Niall Ferguson (edited)
In the global struggle between the Eurasian “Heartland” and the US-led "Rimland," there's trouble ahead. On recent visits to Lisbon and Paris, I heard much discussion of American leadership. I was reminded of what Mahatma Gandhi supposedly said when he was asked for his view of Western civilization — that it would be a very good idea. I feel the same way about American leadership: It would be a very good idea.
It’s a view that seems to be quite widely shared within the European elite, though few of the continent’s leaders dare to say so out loud.
An essential ingredient of leadership is an inspiring destination. Where exactly is it that the US would like its allies to follow? A good answer to that question can be found in the National Intelligence Council’s Global Trends 2040 report, which envisions five scenarios for 17 years hence.
The desired one is obviously “Renaissance of Democracies,” in which the US leads a resurgence of what used to be called the free world. But it is worth reviewing the other four destinations — the ones to be avoided:
In “A World Adrift,” China is the leading but not globally dominant state.
In “Competitive Coexistence,” the US and China prosper and compete for leadership in a bifurcated world.
“Separate Silos” portrays a world in which globalization has broken down, and economic and security blocs emerge to protect states from mounting threats.
“Tragedy and Mobilization” is a story of bottom-up, revolutionary change on the heels of devastating global environmental crises.
The striking thing to me is that, just two years after the document was published, we are already in Scenario 3:
The US-China rivalry and other state-to-state relations are channeled into competition for markets, resources, and brand reputation … Strengthened economic interdependence lowers the risk of the major powers pursuing armed conflict; most of them engage in influence operations, corporate espionage, and cyberattacks that allow them to achieve goals without risking destructive wars.
The central security challenge is how to keep the geopolitical competition between the United States and China from undermining the economic cooperation upon which their prosperity and the global economy depends.
Long-term stability remains at risk from growing climate challenges that were ignored in favor of near-term economic gains; technological innovations and economic prosperity have lulled leaders into believing that they can put off making hard choices on climate change.
Many Europeans have the unpleasant feeling of being caught between two superpowers in a new cold war. They know China is partly to blame for this. But they see the US as equally culpable.
Superficially, of course, the US-led transatlantic alliance is doing much better than might have been expected in its response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine last year. The problem is what might be called “the power law — geopolitical edition,” meaning that the contributions of the 38 countries supporting Ukraine’s war effort are not normally distributed but follow a power law. Put crudely, there is one very large contributor and a lot of very small ones. The very large contributor is of course the US.
According to the most recent data on bilateral commitments from the Ukraine Support Tracker, US commitments of all kinds to Ukraine (financial, humanitarian and military) are seven times greater than those of the next-largest nation state, the UK. They are 15% above the total commitments of all EU members and institutions combined. And US commitments are 45% greater than those of all the other 39 nation states combined. In other words, the US really does lead not only NATO, but also the larger, informal coalition of pro-Ukrainian states.
The reason this is a problem — as opposed to an inherent feature of US leadership — is that it makes any American-led effort abroad heavily reliant on the support of US voters. And they are fickle, especially when they feel that Uncle Sam is being taken in by a bunch of free riders. Nearly 60 years after the publication of Henry Kissinger’s The Troubled Partnership, the trouble remains that the American partners pay a disproportionate share of the cost of defending of Europe.
Right now, 15 months into the war in Ukraine, the American public is still on board. According to a recent Harvard Harris poll, only 23% think President Joe Biden’s administration has done “too much” to counter Russia in Ukraine. Only 15% of Americans think the Biden administration has been “too strong” in its China policy. But history tells us that such shares can grow rapidly, especially if economic times get tougher and as a presidential election draws near.
This brings us to the question of US economic leadership. So long as the American economy is doing better than those of its allies and rivals, Washington can afford to lead in the way we currently see in Ukraine. Superficially, once again, things look good. The Economist, for example, believes the US is “riding high” and “peak China” is approaching.
But on closer inspection the picture is less rosy. For one thing, as the political class reminded us with their recent game of chicken over the debt ceiling, American public finances are on an unsustainable path. The federal deficit is projected to be above 5% of GDP for the next 10 years, hitting 7.3% in 2033. And the trajectory will probably be even worse than the Congressional Budget Office projects, as it has consistently underestimated the growth of the debt to GDP ratio throughout the past 20 years. Debt service is expected to exceed defense spending in 2029. I suspect it will be sooner than that. The history of previous empires that spent more on interest payments than on national security is not encouraging.
Americans are also still paying the higher prices of a grave monetary policy error by the Federal Reserve, which slept through the revival of inflation during 2021 and the early months of 2022. Inflation is now coming down, to be sure, but not to the Federal Reserve’s goal of 2%. The fact that a headline annual rate of 4% and a core rate of 5.3% were thought good enough to justify a pause — rebranded as a “skip” — in the hiking cycle last week speaks for itself. The Fed’s credibility of the 2% average inflation target is in tatters.
No economist can fully explain why 525 basis points of monetary tightening since the beginning of last year have not had a bigger impact. The strength of the labor market and the resilience of the consumer are astonishing. There were 10.1 million job openings in April, up from 9.7 million in March, far exceeding the 5.7 million unemployed Americans that month. Average hourly earnings grew by 4.3% in May compared with year earlier.
A part of the explanation is the Biden administration’s ongoing stimulus of the economy, now also rebranded as “industrial strategy.” In the words of the financier and commentator Steve Rattner, “America is undergoing a factory construction boom,” with real construction spending in manufacturing hitting $190 billion in May. This is part of what you get from around $1.2 trillion in infrastructure-related subsidies, about the same amount in green subsidies, and $39 billion in subsidies for semiconductor production.
With inflation falling and the economy nevertheless booming thanks to the kind of big-government policies Democrats last believed in when Biden was a freshman senator, you might expect the public to be ecstatic. But no good deed goes unpunished in this thankless vale of tears: Gallup’s Economic Confidence index is currently at its lowest level since February 2009. True, with a 42% approval rating, Joe Biden is doing better than Jimmy Carter at the same stage of his one and only presidential term (in May 1979, Carter was at 28%, according to Gallup). But Biden is faring worse than Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush, two other presidents who failed to secure reelection.
Does the US have a leadership strategy? In a column last month, I discussed National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan’s speech at the Brookings Institution, where he set out the administration’s five-step “foreign policy for the middle class.” A key part of that speech explained why the new US industrial strategy poses no threat to American allies, because they are being encouraged to follow the American example. He also implied that the same was true of confining America’s technological lead over China in “a small yard [with a] high fence.”
Officially, the US and the European Union are on the same page when it comes to “de-risking” their economic relationship with China. But privately, Europeans have their doubts. First, they see the Inflation Reduction Act as “America First — Biden edition.” Second, they know that Sullivan’s high fence keeps them out of the artificial intelligence race (except maybe as regulators). Third, they worry about the unintended consequences of what amounts to a US policy of technological containment of China.
No one I spoke to in Europe expected much to come of Washington’s current efforts to “thaw” the new cold war with China (as Biden put it at the G7 meeting in Hiroshima, Japan, last month). The problem for America’s European and Asian allies is that de-coupling from China is very hard to do. Just think, as I pointed out two weeks ago, of the huge investments European car makers have made in Chinese electric vehicle factories.
A good question to ask about American leadership is: Who’s not following? A map of the 38-country pro-Ukraine coalition of the more-or-less-willing looks familiar: It’s essentially North America, Western Europe, Japan and the Antipodes. In the language of geopolitics developed in the last century by Halford J. Mackinder and Nicholas J. Spykman, this is the “Rimland” — as opposed to the vast Eurasian “Heartland” that stretches from the blood-soaked and waterlogged battlefields of the Dnipro to the now dull and despondent streets of Hong Kong; from the prison colonies east of Moscow to the labor camps of Xinjiang, by way of the gallows of Tehran. (My Bloomberg Opinion colleague Hal Brands presciently saw the new relevance of Mackinder two years ago.)
The 2002 “axis of evil” — Iran, Iraq and North Korea — was a speech-writer’s fiction. The 2023 “axis of ill will” — China, Russia, Iran — is a reality. Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, wasn’t Kissinger, but he was still pretty good. In The Grand Chessboard (1997), he warned us:
Potentially, the most dangerous scenario would be a grand coalition of China, Russia, and perhaps Iran, an “antihegemonic” coalition united not by ideology but by complementary grievances. It would be reminiscent in scale and scope of the challenge once posed by the Sino-Soviet bloc, though this time China would likely be the leader and Russia the follower. Averting this contingency, however remote it may be, will require a display of US geostrategic skill on the western, eastern, and southern perimeters of Eurasia simultaneously.
To many states around the world, that skill seems conspicuous by its absence. More and more of them are therefore reluctant to follow the American leader. Jared Cohen — formerly at Google, now at Goldman Sachs — has just published a brilliant essay on “The Rise of Geopolitical Swing State” (my version, presented at the Milken Institute conference last month, was the “polyamorous cold war”), which identifies four distinct categories:
Countries with a competitive advantage in a critical aspect of global supply chains, e.g., India, Brazil, Morocco, Indonesia, Chile, Guyana.
Countries uniquely suited for nearshoring, offshoring or friendshoring, e.g., Vietnam, Mexico, Canada.
Countries with a disproportionate amount of capital and willingness to deploy it around the world e.g., the Gulf states, Norway, Singapore.
Countries with developed economies and leaders with global visions that they pursue within certain constraints e.g., Germany, France, South Korea.
In the Cold War, countries such as India and Yugoslavia proclaimed themselves non-aligned, owing loyalty to neither the US nor the USSR. Today’s swing states, Cohen argues, “will often choose multi-alignment, a strategy that will make them critical — and sometimes unpredictable — forces.”
I tried these ideas out in Paris in conversations that included two of President Emmanuel Macron’s advisers. Supposing there was a war between the US and China over Taiwan, I asked, on whom could Washington rely? “Japan, the UK, Australia. Maybe Canada. That’s it,” was one of the replies.
I was even more startled by the pessimism about Ukraine. “If Trump wins in November next year,” I ventured, “then Zelenskiy is screwed.” “He is screwed whatever happens,” another of my interlocutors replied. “Ukraine cannot get back the Black Sea coast that it has lost” — the so-called land bridge to Crimea. “So the war is effectively over and Putin has won.”
Such conversations reveal a Europe torn between the familiar security of the transatlantic alliance and economic self-interest that barely overlaps with that of the US. And if you think Paris is wobbly, I invite you to visit Berlin. There you will quickly see that Germany — now in recession and with the far-right Alternative für Deutschland polling at a record 20% in the latest YouGov survey — is losing its nerve not only about the war in Ukraine but also about the green-energy transition.
Other recent polls are revealing. An ECFR survey on foreign policy asked European voters how their country should respond to a potential US-China war over Taiwan. Some 60% of Germans favored neutrality; just 23% would want Germany to support the US. And if China started openly delivering ammunition and weapons to Russia? Only 37% of Germans would support imposing sanctions on China.
As for climate change, it’s a clear case of the St. Augustine principle: “Give me chastity and continence — but not yet.” Around three quarters of Europeans want their governments to plant more trees or to pay them subsidies to make their homes more energy efficient, according to a new YouGov poll of seven EU countries. But only around 20% of Germans are themselves willing to switch to an electric car or would support a ban on sale of petrol or diesel cars.
US leadership would indeed be a good idea. A trip to Europe undermines your faith in it. It is partly, of course, the diminishing credibility of Reagan’s “shining city on a hill” as a role model — understandable when a former president may have to win reelection next year to avoid going to jail.
But there is something more profound at work. The US today is the undisputed leader of Spykman’s Rimland against the Heartland, much as it was in the 1950s. But the Rim is somehow thinner than it was back then. And today it shows the first worrisome signs of cracking.
Read full article here.