Follow us on social

Signal-2022-10-12-160321_001

Surprise high level talks could calm US-China tensions over Taiwan

But experts say Washington and Beijing still need to make concrete steps to improve bilateral ties.

Reporting | Asia-Pacific

Following a tense few months of superpower shadowboxing, a flurry of talks have broken out between the United States and China. 

On Monday, U.S. Ambassador to Beijing Nicholas Burns met with Foreign Minister Qin Gang for the first time since an apparent Chinese spy balloon knocked U.S.-China ties off course earlier this year.

But the main attraction came on Wednesday and Thursday, when National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan sat down with Wang Yi — China’s top diplomat — for over eight hours of talks that the White House described as “candid, substantive, and constructive.” 

The pair discussed a series of thorny issues, including bilateral ties, the war in Ukraine, and rising tensions over Taiwan. In readouts from the talks, each side emphasized the importance of keeping open channels of communication and the need to stabilize relations between the two great powers.

Experts say the meetings are a welcome step, but concrete steps are still needed to reassure observers that ties are improving. “What is needed on both sides is a recognition of the fact that they both contribute to the downward slide in relations and thus both need to be willing to take actions to arrest that slide,” said Michael Swaine of the Quincy Institute.

“Countries around the world, including close U.S. allies, are looking for meaningful progress toward stabilizing the relationship and averting a crisis or worse over Taiwan,” Swaine added. “So has this meeting begun a process toward that end? And if so, when will we see tangible signs of such progress?”

Following the balloon incident, Secretary of State Antony Blinken canceled a major planned visit to China that has yet to be rescheduled. Tensions rose in the ensuing months, with each side trading barbs over Taiwan.

Beijing was particularly incensed at Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s high-profile meeting with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, in addition to a spate of recent U.S. arms sales to Taiwan that China viewed as a sign that President Joe Biden was not truly committed to deescalation.

As ties continued to worsen, a top Pentagon official said late last month that China was no longer “picking up the phone when we’re calling them.”

“From Beijing’s perspective, Biden is gaslighting [Chinese President] Xi [Jinping], and a resumption of high-level talks would only serve to further encourage and legitimize this behavior,” reporter Ethan Paul argued in RS last week.

It’s unclear what led Beijing to change course so quickly. One possible explanation came yesterday, when Reuters revealed that, after the balloon incident, the U.S. decided to delay a number of “planned actions against China” in order to separate the flare in tensions from other aspects of the bilateral relationship. 

Regardless of why it’s happening now, reengagement could create significant upside for both parties, especially when it comes to the war in Ukraine, according to Anatol Lieven and Jake Werner of the Quincy Institute.

The Biden administration “can build on this meager but noteworthy shift in tone, recognizing that U.S. and Chinese interests are more often aligned than opposed, and explore what might be accomplished when the two most powerful countries in the world step away from confrontation,” Lieven and Werner wrote in RS today.

Hidden in the spate of recent talks was a meeting between Ambassador Burns and Beijing’s commerce minister, Wang Wentao. Burns described the conversation as an “open and detailed discussion on the bilateral trade relationship,” which has faced significant pressure as many in Washington push for a “decoupling” of the U.S. and Chinese economies.

As economist Adam Tooze recently noted, a less capricious approach to bilateral trade would go a long way toward calming relations between the two powers and avoiding a new cold war. 

“[I]t is hard to see how [Washington’s current approach], in which the United States arrogates to itself the right to define which trajectory of Chinese economic growth is and is not acceptable, can possibly be a basis for peace,” Tooze argued. “If the United States is still interested in global economic and political order, and it surely should be, it must be open to negotiate peaceful change. Otherwise, it is simply asking for a fight.”


National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan (via Reuters)
Reporting | Asia-Pacific
POGO
Top image credit: Project on Government Oversight

The non-empires strike back

Military Industrial Complex

The Bunker appears originally at the Project on Government Oversight and is republished here with permission.

keep readingShow less
Trump Netanyahu
Top image credit: noamgalai / Shutterstock.com

Trump appears all in for Netanyahu's political survival

Middle East

On March 25, Israeli Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu’s government passed its long-delayed 2025 budget. Had the vote failed, it would have automatically triggered snap elections — an outcome Netanyahu appears politically incapable of surviving.

While Israel cited stalled hostage negotiations and ongoing security threats as reasons for ending the U.S.-backed ceasefire in Gaza, Netanyahu’s decision to resume large-scale military operations just days before the vote also appeared aimed at shoring up support from far-right coalition partners such as Itamar Ben Gvir. The budget, framed explicitly by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich as a “war budget,” includes record levels of defense spending and a dramatic increase in funding for Israeli public diplomacy, a nod to the government’s attempt to counteract ongoing international condemnation of Israel’s military actions in Gaza.

keep readingShow less
JFK wanted to splinter CIA ‘into a thousand pieces.’ Why didn't he?
Top photo credit: Unredacted memo by Arthur Schlesinger (JFK files) and President John F. Kennedy, 1962 (public domain/Donald Cooksey)

JFK wanted to splinter CIA ‘into a thousand pieces.’ Why didn't he?

Washington Politics

When the final, declassified records from the John F. Kennedy assassination files were posted on the National Archives’ website last week, the first document researchers and reporters searched for was White House adviser Arthur Schlesinger Jr.’s June 1961 memorandum to the president titled “CIA Reorganization.”

ABC News led its initial coverage on the release of the JFK papers with that document, quoting Schlesinger’s now unredacted, dramatic, statistics that showed that the "CIA today has nearly as many people under official cover overseas as [the] State [Department].” The New York Times also featured that document with a headline “A Kennedy aide worried that the C.I.A. threatened the State Department’s power.”

keep readingShow less

Trump transition

Latest

Newsletter

Subscribe now to our weekly round-up and don't miss a beat with your favorite RS contributors and reporters, as well as staff analysis, opinion, and news promoting a positive, non-partisan vision of U.S. foreign policy.