China’s new US ambassador arrives to fill post left vacant since October 2020
- Nicholas Burns, who has talked tough on China, arrives at a time of tense bilateral relations
- Burns has described Beijing as the aggressor in its ties with Taiwan, and said its stance on Hong Kong showed it cannot be trusted
The United States has been without an ambassador in Beijing since Terry Branstad stepped down in October 2020.
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President Joe Biden’s nomination of Burns for the post was approved by the US Senate on December 16.
The embassy tweet said Burns’ travel plans had been delayed due to the pandemic and that a group of US mission personnel and their families travelled with him.
The US did not send new diplomats to its China missions last year amid strict Chinese Covid-19 controls, although it never announced a policy to that effect. State Department spokesman Ned Price said at the time that the US had concerns about China’s “quarantine and testing policies that run counter to diplomatic privileges.”
Burns, who has served under Democratic and Republican presidents, is viewed as a calm, savvy professional in Washington’s partisan politics. Apart from Nato, he previously also served as US ambassador to Greece.
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“China is not an Olympian power … They have enormous strengths. They have very few friends. They have no real allies,” he said.
“We’re a strong country. We should be confident, for our values and our interests, and we can stand up to the Chinese. But our allies and partners can help to do that so that there’s real weight and leverage.”
The US could not trust Beijing given how it had reneged on the “one nation, two systems” framework for Hong Kong, he said, adding that Washington had “enormous latitude” to deepen its security assistance to Taiwan.
