Thaw in Sino-American ties seems distant as Beijing snubs US overtures

Sino-US relations

Chinese President Xi Jinping has been meeting or calling a number of world leaders in recent weeks. But not his American counterpart Joe Biden. Observers say he is deliberately giving the cold shoulder to the US President. Attempts by the Biden administration to restart the engagement between the US and China at the highest political level have been repeatedly rebuffed by Beijing.

At a time when there is renewed tension over Taiwan, the non-engagement between Washington, DC and Beijing has started worrying observers in the region.

In March, Xi travelled to Moscow to hold a bilateral summit with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin where he reaffirmed China’s strong friendship with Russia. This month, the Chinese president hosted his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron and a few days earlier, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

Later he also met the Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva when the latter visited Beijing, and had a phone conversation with Saudi Crown Prince Mohamad Bin Salman.

“But Beijing is simply not returning calls from the Americans,” Derek Chollet, the US State Department Counsellor told the Sunday Times of the UK in a recent interview.

He added, “Overtures had been made by us to have engagements with them, they have not taken up on those overtures.”

China has also refused to respond to US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin’s suggestion to restart the defence dialogue between the two countries.

In November last year, the US President and his Chinese counterpart had their first in person meeting in Bali in the post-Covid period, where Biden and Xi agreed to lower tensions between the two countries over the Taiwan issue. The Chinese president had warned that Taiwan was the ‘red line’ in Sino-American ties that should not be crossed by Washington while reiterating that the promised merger of Taiwan with mainland China will be done through peaceful means.

Early this year, the chill deepened after a Chinese balloon was discovered floating over American airspace. Washington called it the spy balloon and accused China of trying to use it and others like it for espionage. But Beijing insisted they were to gather weather data and had floated into American territory by mistake. As domestic pressure built up in America, the Biden administration decided to shoot down the balloon. However, even as China tried to downplay the incident, the calling off of a planned visit to Beijing by US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken added further strain to bilateral ties.

Observers say that the current Chinese decision of not rushing to restart engagement with the US stems from its assessment that attempting to restore normal ties with the US would be fruitless. The New York Times said Xi’s government has intensified a campaign of ridicule and criticism of the US and Western democracy. The newspaper added that efforts to shore up ties with American allies while publicly discrediting the US reflect Beijing’s hardening position as relations sink to their lowest point in decades.

And it all comes back to Taiwan, which has emerged as a major irritant in Sino-American relations and is the prime factor behind China rebuffing US attempts to reengage. Tension flared up in the Taiwan Strait in April after Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen held a meeting with the US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy while transiting through America. China, which claims Taiwan as its breakaway territory and is determined to merge it with the mainland, sees any high-level political dialogue between the Taiwan president and the US leaders as an attempt to encourage the island to declare independence.

In protest against the Tsai-McCarthy meeting, China held a three-day coercive military exercise with an aircraft carrier and fighter jets near Taiwan. But the US also responded by holding its biggest ever military exercise with the Philippines and tried to assure Taiwan and other allies in Asia that it was there to protect them in the face of a possible Chinese aggression.

The Chinese leadership sees the recent military exercise hosted by the US and its attempt to strengthen defence ties with Japan and South Korea as part of provoking Beijing and keeping it unsettled.

But it is also careful to not cut off diplomatic relations with the US completely. In a post-Covid period when it is trying to revive its economy after two years of lockdowns, China is keen to reassure investors, especially those from the US, that it is ready to do business. The business climate and investors’ confidence could also be affected if tension between China and the US leadership continues to rise. Therefore, the Chinese leadership is also trying to strike a balance between the two opposing compulsions.

US State Department Counsellor Chollet was quoted to have said in his interview with the Sunday Times, “There is no question that the relationship with the PRC (People’s Republic of China) has been at a tense moment.”

He added, “We feel the responsibility to manage this relationship responsibly.”

But unless China shows the same urgency, a reengagement between the two countries will have to wait for some more time.

In all of this, perhaps US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has provided Beijing with the opening it was looking for to restart economic engagement. On April 20, Yellen called for a “constructive” economic relationship between China and the US.