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US-China relations
China

Blinken visit unlikely to fix US-China differences, but Russia a possible area of progress: analysts

  • Tariffs, human rights and climate change among contentious items America’s top diplomat expected to discuss in Beijing
  • Bilateral differences over Taiwan present sharpest areas of disagreement amid talk of possible cross-strait conflict

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US Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks in Jerusalem, Israel, on Monday. Blinken is expected to visit Chinese officials in Beijing in February. Photo: EPA-EFE
Robert Delaneyin WashingtonandKhushboo Razdanin New York
Washington and Beijing are too far apart on most outstanding bilateral issues for their relations to improve appreciably when US Secretary of State Antony Blinken meets his Chinese counterparts this weekend, with Russia likely to be the only front for possible progress, US analysts said on Monday.
Allegations of Chinese support for Russia’s war against Ukraine, tariffs, human rights, US export restrictions and cooperation on climate change are all poised to appear on the agenda, each with significant obstacles to potential breakthroughs

Jude Blanchette, Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Washington-based think tank Centre for Strategic and International Studies, stressed there should not be “many expectations” of any “significant breakthroughs” from the trip. But he added this was not a “bad thing” given how far the relationship had deteriorated over the last five years.

Blinken’s visit was mainly about “re-establishing the undergirding of the relationship and putting in place some procedures and mechanisms to be able to manage through the tensions”, Blanchette said.

However, differences over Taiwan present the sharpest areas of disagreement owing to assessments of a possible armed conflict across the Taiwan Strait, making Blinken’s trip crucial in offsetting military rhetoric with diplomacy, said Michael Swaine, a senior fellow at the Quincy Institute, a Washington think tank.

“In a larger context of growing distrust over the overall motives of the other side in which China sees the US as supposedly trying to weaken and contain China [and] the US sees China supposedly trying to achieve dominance in Asia … both sides have increasingly relied on deterrence – particularly military deterrence – over forms of reassurance,” Swaine said.

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