US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Beijing on June 18 for a two-day visit to China. Having postponed a February trip after the unintended entry of a Chinese civilian unmanned airship into US airspace, Blinken is the highest-ranking US government official to visit China since President Joe Biden took office in January 2021.
“We are at a crucial time, but is it the right time to meet? Better late than never. The right time would have been for Blinken to have gone to China in February at the time of the big brouhaha about the balloon to solve that problem,” said Harvey Dzodin, former legal adviser in the Carter Administration and former director and vice president of the ABC Television in New York, in an online interview with GDToday from Vienna, Austria.
“I’m still hopeful that as a result of these meetings starting today, China and the US will get back on a better footing and have a more positive relationship,” Harvey noted.
China-US tensions may be rooted in the failure of US political system
“One thing that’s really disappointed me so far during the Biden administration is that Donald Trump’s punitive tariffs on Chinese goods still remain in effect,” Harvey furthered, “Another thing are the very punitive actions of the US in putting in place extralegal and extraterritorial restrictions on technology. It seems almost by design to be harming companies, such as Huawei and TikTok, that are doing so well globally.”
Two days before Blinken announced his visit to China, the US added more than 30 Chinese companies to an export control list, accusing these entities of providing training to Chinese military pilots and other activities threatening US national security. So far, the US has added more than 1,200 Chinese entities and individuals to various lists that subject them to a variety of restrictions.
Harvey told GDToday that the US suppresses China’s development because it cannot accept the loss of supremacy to China and other rising nations. “The US State Department is built on the legacy of American supremacy. We have some ideologues who believe in American exceptionalism that America is a country chosen by God to rule the world. It gets threatened if it’s not number one, and China has risen and modernized very quickly.”
In addition, Harvey analyzed that “US’ democracy has died in the last 50 years,” and the once-proud principle of “one man, one vote” has been exploited to turn the mechanism of checks and balances into a tool for partisan politics.
For example, “the US Supreme Court now, which is supposed to be independent, is beholden to conservative interests that basically control what the federal government can do. The Biden administration wants to enact or continue some policies. The Supreme Court will knock them down. It will not discuss issues of gerrymandering, either.”
Harvey added that factions within the Democratic Party and the Republican Party have complicated the White House’s foreign policy, where some are pushing for better communication between China and the US, while the hawkish ones continue erecting barriers.
“I have to say that America is so divided by the system that’s been created. And unfortunately, the only thing that people agree upon now is that China is bad. This is not a good way to run a country, but it’s a strategy for trying to maintain supremacy over the rising nations,” Harvey elaborated.
“However, the bottom line in the 21st century is that we have to work together, and that we’re codependent on each other, especially when the industries of the US and China are highly complementary. The US shouldn’t have thrown the baby out with the bathwater,” Harvey said.
Reestablishment of communication channels urged to ease tension between China and the US
At the 20th Shangri-La Dialogue in early June, the defence ministers of China and the US could not hold formal talks because the US side did not lift sanctions against Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu. However, the handshake between the two countries’ defence chiefs at a welcome dinner slightly eased the tense atmosphere.
“The former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger is right that if the US and China don’t change the present trajectory, we’re in for big trouble. We have to step back from the edge of disaster,” Harvey noted.
“The most important topic Blinken needs to discuss with Chinese officials during his visit is the red lines about Taiwan, because this is the biggest place where our relations could get out of control and where there could be a war,” Harvey said.
He stressed that China and the US are in dire need of creating channels of communication to manage disputes, especially military-to-military communication channels. He recalled that China and the US used to hold multiple strategic and economic dialogues annually, which had been discontinued by the Trump administration.
“The annual affairs required lots of preparation, but the US and China endured them because they recognized that there were many benefits to having regular open dialogues on tough issues and issues that maybe we could solve,” Harvey said.
However, Harvey pointed out that communications have been disrupted, and confrontation has escalated between China and the US, as a result of the Trump administration’s tough stance on China, as well as the Taiwan trips by then US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
“I hope more efforts will be made to get back to having channels of communication. And when there is a problem in between formal dialogues, officials on both sides will know who they can pick up the phone to or write an email to, in order to address a problem of mutual interest or concern,” Harvey said.
People-to-people diplomacy key to improving China-US relations
On June 14, Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, arrived in Beijing, starting his first visit to China in four years, following the China trips by Western business leaders, including JPMorgan Chase & Co CEO Jamie Dimon, Starbucks’ global CEO Laxman Narasimhan, General Motors CEO Mary Barr, Apple CEO Tim Cook, and Tesla CEO Elon Musk this year.
When the White House is labeling its China strategy as “de-risking” over “decoupling”, which Harvey considers a “false dichotomy”, he is happy to see American business leaders visit China and meet Chinese officials.
“Business people are playing an increasingly important part now in carrying on bilateral relations, where before they may not have had such. I think it’s a sign of some frustration on their side because they are feeling the government not so reflective of their needs and their opinions today,” Harvey said.
“We need more of such exchanges to perform a parallel track to formal diplomacy between the US and China. Zhou Enlai, your first premier, had a model of exactly this, called folk diplomacy. Today, we call it people-to-people diplomacy. It’s actually a better solution even now,” Harvey noted.
“Now that COVID-19’s impacts on international transportation are being eased, I hope that more Americans and Europeans will visit China and look for themselves. They don’t know the great progress China’s made,” Harvey said.
Reporter | Lydia Liu, Steven Yuen
Video editor | Qin Shaolong
Video script | Lydia Liu
Poster designer | Mia
Editor | Olivia, Jerry
