Tags
Asia-Pacific, Biden, Biden administration, China, Indo-Pacific, Japan, national interests, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Russia, Taiwan, Taiwan Strait, Vladimir Putin, Xi JInPing
Everyone old enough to read this post is way more than old enough to remember all the optimism that emanated from the last summit between President Biden and Chinese dictator Xi Jinping – because it took place just under two months ago.
In particular, as the White House stated, Mr. Biden
“reiterated that [the bilateral] competition should not veer into conflict and underscored that the United States and China must manage the competition responsibly and maintain open lines of communication. The two leaders discussed the importance of developing principles that would advance these goals and tasked their teams to discuss them further. “
In other words, Xi said that he bought in to this idea of a responsibly managed Great Power competition. And this conclusion quickly became the conventiona wisdom about the summit. As The New York Times argued, despite
“the deeply divergent views behind their disagreements, including over the future of Taiwan, military rivalry, technology restrictions and China’s mass detentions of its citizens….with the stakes so high, both Mr. Biden’s and Mr. Xi’s language represented a choice not to gamble on unrestricted conflict but to bet that personal diplomacy and more than a decade of contacts could stave off worsening disputes.”
And the U.S. Institute of Peace, a Congressionally-sponsored “independent” think tank, closely paraphased the President’s main claim: “Despite the differences between both countries, there appears to be a growing openness to the use of diplomacy to manage the relationship.”
Yet it’s already clear – from China – that these contentions aren’t aging so welll. Just consider what’s happened in the last month alone:
>In mid-December, China began stepping up naval and air drills near a chain of southern Japanese islands, including sending a carrier battle group that simulated an attack on this Japanese territory.
>Several days later, the Chinese teamed up with Russia’s Pacific fleet for a week of joint exercises that Moscow said [quoting Reuters here] “included practising how to capture an enemy submarine with depth charges and firing artillery at a warship.”
>On December 21, a Chinese fighter jet flew within 20 feet of a U.S. Air Force reconnaisance plane flying over the South China Sea.
>On Christmas Day, 47 Chinese military aircraft flew across the median line over the Taiwan Strait and into air space claimed by the island. Reportedly, the incursion was the largest in months.
>And on December 30, Xi and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, held a videoconference in which Xi promised “in the face of a difficult and far from straightforward international situation,” Beijing was ready “to increase strategic cooperation with Russia, provide each other with development opportunities, be global partners for the benefit of the peoples of our countries and in the interests of stability around the world.”
China predictably blamed U.S. provocations and Japan’s recently announced and dramatic military buildup for this dangerous sequence of events, but the more important point by far is this: The Biden administration continues its long-time habit (see, e.g., here) of speaking in terms of processes and procedures that can only reenforce the impression of America defining its interests in the Asia-Pacific region in dangerously vague ways, and China obviously keeps thinking of its objectives in much more specific, concrete ways. In other words, it’s time for much straighter talk from the United States.