President Xi Jinping went to work yesterday in Beijing receiving Secretary of State Antony Blinken: “China and the USA should be partners, not rivals”. “We hope that the US will see China’s progress as a positive thing. The planet is big enough to accommodate the prosperity of both,” he added.
Until the last moment he did not confirm his meeting with Blinken, who closed three days of an official visit to China that had as a highlight, yesterday, a five-hour meeting with his counterpart, Wang Yi . The Chinese Foreign Minister recognized a “positive stabilization” of the relationship between the two great powers, after the meeting of their heads of state, in the autumn in San Francisco. Something corroborated hours later by Xi himself. However, Wang let it slip that it is up to Washington to continue down this path or fall back into a negative spiral. Something that, according to him, would have consequences not only for the two countries, but for the whole world.
In any case, the head of Chinese diplomacy highlighted the advances in issues of mutual interest, in which the control of narcotics stands out, a very sensitive matter in a nation on which the British Empire imposed two wars of the Opi to turn Hong Kong into a drug-trafficking center. The equivalent of opium for China in the 19th century is today, for the USA, fentanyl, the number one cause of death for its adult population under 50 years of age. At the request of Washington, Beijing would have introduced more controls on the export of active principles used in the preparation of this drug.
Blinken’s second visit to China in twelve months ended on a more positive note than the first, in June. However, the US has criticized China in recent days for its exports to Russia, not of armaments, but of dual-use manufactures and even raw materials.
Likewise, its president, Joe Biden, has threatened to triple the tariffs on Chinese steel and aluminum. The Wall Street Journal, for its part, goes even further and hints that some Chinese banks could be sanctioned by the US and expelled from the international banking system of the American parent. The reason, its alleged collaboration with Russia so that its companies evade Western sanctions. The identity of these banks is unclear, but the top four banks in the world by asset value are all Chinese.
Add to all this the more than likely ban in the US of TikTok. It seems that opening the door to Mastercard has not helped China much. The thing is, while the US ban on Chinese apps may be arbitrary and malicious, it’s still a symmetrical response to China’s ban on most US apps and social networks, from WhatsApp to Facebook , passing through X.
On the other hand, Biden continues to arm Taiwan and insists that he would defend the island from a hypothetical aggression by the People’s Republic of China. In any case, Beijing and Washington recognize a certain detente in the Taiwan Strait, compared to the dominant situation during the past year. Of course, any support for the secession of the island of Chinese population and culture is part of the red lines drawn by Beijing and which Wang pointed out again yesterday, linked to “China’s sovereignty, security and development” .
