U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken talks with U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns with U.S. Consulate General in Shanghai Scott Walker, while attending a basketball game between the Shanghai Sharks and the Zhejiang Golden Bulls at Shanghai Indoor Stadium, in Shanghai, China on April 24, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken returned on April 24 to China on his second visit in a year, as the United States ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing.

The U.S. diplomat will meet China’s top brass on Friday in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates a new leader, and to raise U.S. concerns on Chinese trade practices — a vital issue for President Joe Biden in an election year.

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But Mr. Blinken is also seeking to stabilise ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies palpably easing since his last visit in June.

At the time, he was the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit China in five years, and the trip was followed by a meeting between the countries’ presidents in November.

At that summit in California, Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to a U.S. wish list including restoring contact between militaries and cracking down on precursor chemicals to fentanyl, the powerful painkiller behind an addiction epidemic in the United States.

Mr. Blinken arrived in Shanghai, where he will kick off his visit by attending a Chinese basketball play-off match between two teams with American players on their rosters.

The friendly side trip — the first visit by a U.S. secretary of state to the bustling metropolis since Hillary Clinton in 2010 — would have been unthinkable until recently, with hawks on both sides previously speaking of a new Cold War between the two powers.

Pressing on Russia

A senior U.S. official previewing Mr. Blinken’s trip said the relationship between the countries was at a “different place” to a year ago, when it was at “an historic low point”.

However, “responsibly managing competition does not mean we will pull back from measures to protect U.S. national interests”, he added.

The Biden administration’s eagerness to engage China stands in stark contrast to its efforts to isolate Russia since its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

The United States has accused China in recent weeks of lavishing industrial material and technology on Moscow.

Washington has encouraged European leaders to stand firm on China not backing Russia, believing Beijing wants stable ties with the West as it focuses on addressing economic headwinds at home.

“If China purports on the one hand to want good relations with Europe and other countries, it can’t on the other hand be fuelling what is the biggest threat to European security since the end of the Cold War,” Mr. Blinken said Friday.

Progress on fentanyl

The Biden administration has trumpeted the agreement with Mr. Xi on fentanyl as a success.

A State Department official said that since the November summit, China appears to have taken its first law enforcement measures on the matter since 2017, and that Mr. Blinken would be asking for further implementation.

More regular law enforcement action from Beijing against China-based companies involved in fentanyl supply chains “would send a strong signal of China’s commitment to address this issue”, the official said.

Other issues likely to come up will be more fraught.

The U.S. Congress gave final approval on Tuesday night to a $95 billion package of assistance to allies including self-ruled Taiwan, which Beijing claims as part of its territory.

In response, China said Wednesday that U.S. military support for the island only increased the “risk of conflict”, and warned it would take “resolute and effective measures to safeguard its sovereignty, security and territorial integrity”.

The U.S. Congress also approved legislation on Tuesday requiring the wildly popular social media app TikTok to be divested from its Chinese parent company ByteDance, or be shut out of the American market.

Asked about the development, a spokesman for China’s foreign ministry declined to respond, referring journalists to China’s “previously explained… principled position”.

Beijing has furiously denounced the plans, urging Washington to “truly respect the principles of market economy and fair competition”.

Also Read | Xi Jinping says Putin’s re-election ‘fully reflects’ support of Russian people

Mr. Biden faces a rematch in November against former president Donald Trump, who has vowed a more confrontational approach against China.

Yun Sun, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Stimson Center, said that China’s leaders, eager to focus on their economy, were in a wait-and-see mode ahead of the U.S. election.

“The Chinese understand that the Biden administration is unlikely to deliver any good news on trade because that simply does not support the election agenda,” she said.

For Chinese leaders this year, “their priority is to keep the relationship stable”.

“Until there is clarity on who the next administration will be, I don’t think they see a better strategy,” she said.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is headed to a China determined to avoid open conflict with the United States, yet the world’s two largest economies still appear to be hashing out the rules on how to compete against each other.

There are tensions over Chinese government support for the manufacturing of electric vehicles and solar panels, just as the U.S. government ramps up its own aid for those tech sectors. There are differences in trade, ownership of TikTok, access to computer chips and national security — all of them a risk to what has become a carefully managed relationship.

The 77-year-old Yellen, a renowned economist and former Federal Reserve chair, laid out to reporters the issues that she intends to raise with her Chinese counterparts during her five-day visit. Ms. Yellen is headed to Guangzhou and Beijing for meetings with finance leaders and state officials. Her engagements will include Vice Premier He Lifeng, Chinese Central Bank Governor Pan Gongsheng, former Vice Premier Liu He, leaders of American businesses operating in China, university students and local leaders.

Ms. Yellen, speaking to reporters Wednesday during a refueling stop in Alaska en route to Asia, said her visit would be a “continuation of the dialogue that we have been engaged and deepening” ever since U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping met in 2022 in Indonesia. She noted that it would be her third meeting with China’s vice premier.

Ms. Yellen recently accused China of flooding global markets with heavily subsidised green energy products, possibly undercutting the subsidies the U.S. has provided to its own renewable energy and EV sector with funds provided by the Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act. She said she intends to repeat her concerns to Chinese officials that they’re flooding the global market with cheap solar panels and EVs that thwart the ability of other countries to develop those sectors.

“We need to have a level playing field,” Ms. Yellen told reporters. “We’re concerned about a massive investment in China in a set of industries that’s resulting in overcapacity.”

Ms. Yellen didn’t rule out taking additional steps to counter Chinese subsidies in the green energy sectors, adding, “It’s not just the United States but quite a few countries, including Mexico, Europe, Japan, that are feeling the pressure from massive investment, in these industries in China.”

The Treasury secretary’s travels come after Mr. Biden and Mr. Xi held their first call in five months on Tuesday, meant to demonstrate a return to regular leader-to-leader dialogue between the two powers. The leaders discussed Taiwan, artificial intelligence and security issues.

The call, described by the White House as “candid and constructive,” was the leaders’ first conversation since their November summit in California, which renewed ties between the two nations’ militaries and enhanced cooperation on stemming the flow of deadly fentanyl and its precursors from China.

Still, it appears to be difficult for the two countries to strike a balance between competition and antagonism.

For instance, Mr. Xi last week hosted American CEOs in Beijing to court them on investing in China. Meanwhile, Mr. Biden last August issued an executive order that instructed an inter-agency committee, chaired by Ms. Yellen, to closely monitor U.S. investment in China related to high-tech manufacturing.

Jude Blanchette, a China expert at the Center for Strategic & International Studies, said, “the Biden administration’s efforts over the last year to stabilize the relationship are clearly working, but the main friction points all remain unresolved and will likely challenge the relationship for the foreseeable future.”

“For the time being, a managed rivalry’ might be the best we can hope for, given the potentially catastrophic consequences of the relationship really going off the rails,” he said.

Ms. Yellen last week said China is flooding the market with green energy that “distorts global prices,” and plans to tell her counterparts that Beijing’s increased production of solar energy, electric vehicles and lithium-ion batteries poses risks to productivity and growth to the global economy.

China began to broaden its presence in the global economy more than two decades ago, exporting cheap goods that appealed to U.S. consumers at the expense of factory jobs in many of those consumers’ hometowns. Research by the economists David Autor, David Dorn and Gordon Hanson into what’s known as the “China Shock” led to the steady demise of many factory towns, and in some cases led to greater political discontent.

Still, some experts see a benefit in an economic showdown to produce green products.

Shang-Jin Wei, a professor of Chinese business at Columbia University, says that a subsidy war could ultimately help consumers in both countries buy more climate-friendly products, which is an aim of the Biden administration.

“In contrast, a U.S. tariff on EV imports could raise the price of EVs in the U.S. and is therefore counterproductive for the purpose of inducing a green transition.”

Ms. Yellen’s trip will run from April 4 to 9. It’s intended as a follow-up to Ms. Yellen’s travel to China last July, which resulted in the launch of a pair of economic working groups between the two nations’ finance departments to ease tensions and deepen ties.

But this visit falls in an election year, where tough talk on China has increased by Democrats and Republicans — who criticize Chinese ownership of popular social media app TikTok, the nation’s censorship and human rights record and hold a deep mistrust over recent acts of espionage such as hacking and the use of a spy balloon.

Scheherazade S. Rehman, a professor of International Business and Finance and International Affairs at George Washington University, said while “it’s an election year, so all the rhetoric is going to be sharper, the U.S and China are in a symbiotic trading relationship and ultimately need each other.”

China is one of the United States’ biggest trading partners, and economic competition between the two nations has increased in recent years. Yellen stressed Wednesday that the United States has no interest in decoupling from China.

China’s support of Russia as it continues its invasion of neighboring Ukraine is another issue that will come up during the meetings. As the U.S. and its allies sanction Russian officials and entire sectors of the Russian economy, like banking, oil production and manufacturing, trade between China and Russia has increased.

In this photo released by Xinhua News Agency, Chinese President Xi Jinping walks with representatives from American business, strategic and academic communities at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, March 27, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

Chinese President Xi Jinping met with representatives of U.S. businesses on March 27 as Beijing seeks to woo foreign investment and reassure American firms in the face of a slowing economy.

Officials are keen to bring in investment to kickstart growth as they battle a range of headwinds including a prolonged property-sector crisis, soaring youth unemployment and a global slowdown that is hammering demand for Chinese goods.

Hosting the group of executives at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People, state broadcaster CCTV showed Mr. Xi chuckling as he expounded on what he characterised as the mutual reliance between Beijing and Washington.

Among the attendees was Cristiano Amon, CEO of Qualcomm, a major producer of semiconductors — which are at the forefront of U.S.-China tech rivalry — a photo released by Beijing’s foreign ministry showed.

Also in attendance was Stephen Schwarzman, CEO of private equity giant Blackstone.

“Differences will always exist, because people are different, and even people from the same family are different, too,” Mr. Xi said.

“But we should seek common ground and build more consensus. This is true between nations and as well as between family members,” he added.

Mr. Xi said that “the history of China-U.S. relations is a history of friendly exchanges between the two peoples”.

“People from all walks of life in both countries should have more exchanges and more cooperation.”

Mr. Xi told the U.S. executives that “as long as both sides see each other as partners and show mutual respect, coexist in peace and cooperate for win-win results, China-US relations will get better,” according to a readout published by the Chinese foreign ministry.

The Ministry did not name all the participants, but photos indicated that Apple CEO Tim Cook — who recently visited China — was not in attendance.

Lower growth target

Mr. Cook last week opened a new Apple store in Shanghai before attending the China Development Forum in Beijing alongside other top executives.

Economic growth rates in China have been trending downwards for years, and Beijing this month set an annual target of “around 5%” — significantly lower than the breakneck rates that powered the country’s meteoric rise to prosperity.

The crucial China-U.S. economic relationship has also suffered as the two powers clash on flashpoint issues from technology and trade to human rights as well as over the self-ruled island of Taiwan and the South China Sea.

U.S. firms in China have increasingly complained about what they see as an unfair business environment, with limited protection for intellectual property and preferential treatment afforded to domestic competitors.

Those fears were compounded last year by a broad crackdown on U.S. consulting firms operating in China.

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo warned in August that business in China could become “too risky” for U.S. firms without changes to the regulatory environment.

China has rebuffed those fears, touting its openness to foreign investment and promising to do more to help them.

Mr. Xi on Wednesday told the US executives that American firms were welcome to “continue to invest in China, cultivate the market and grow their business”.

Last November, Mr. Xi spoke to U.S. business leaders following a summit with President Joe Biden in San Francisco, promising to “build more bridges and pave more roads for people-to-people interactions”.

The U.S. House of Representatives’ China committee will introduce a bill to ban the U.S. government from buying Chinese drones, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday.

Mike Gallagher, the Republican head of the committee, and Raja Krishnamoorthi, the ranking Democrat, will introduce the “American Security Drone Act” on Wednesday, the FT report added.

“This bill would prohibit the federal government from using American taxpayer dollars to purchase drones from countries like China,” Gallagher told the FT.

China recently announced export controls on some drones and drone-related equipment, saying it wanted to safeguard “national security and interests” in response to escalating tension with the United States over access to technology.

The bill was cosigned by Virginia Republican Rob Wittman and Connecticut Democrat Joe Courtney, the FT said, adding that the bill would also bar local and state governments from purchasing Chinese drones with federal grants.

The U.S. House of Representatives’ China committee did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Washington:

White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi over the weekend, officials said Sunday, in the latest effort to ease tensions between the superpowers.

Jake Sullivan and Wang Yi met in the Mediterranean island nation of Malta on Saturday and Sunday, the White House said.

“This meeting was part of ongoing efforts to maintain open lines of communication and responsibly manage the relationship,” a statement said.

President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping have not talked or met since a summit in Bali last year but US officials say they are working to renew contact between the two leaders.

A string of high-level US officials, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, have met recently with Chinese officials to prepare a possible Xi-Biden meeting.

The White House said Jake Sullivan and Wang Yi “committed to maintain this strategic channel of communication and to pursue additional high-level engagement.”

A Chinese government statement on the Malta meeting largely echoed the US version, saying “the two sides conducted candid, substantive and constructive strategic communication.”

Wang Yi brought up the issue of Taiwan — a self-governing, democratic island that China claims but which also receives strong US support — as a “red line that cannot be crossed in Sino-US relations.”

“The United States noted the importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait,” according to the White House readout.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)