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https://scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3142374/why-tianjin-and-whats-store-china-us-envoy-wendy-sherman
China/ Diplomacy

Why Tianjin? And what’s in store in China for US envoy Wendy Sherman?

  • Beijing might be repaying a favour to Washington by hosting the meeting outside the Chinese capital, an observer says
  • The talks come after lengthy protocol jostling but that they are happening at all is positive, analysts say
The meeting will be held at the Tianjin Binhai One Hotel. Photo: Weibo

A lot remains uncertain as to what US No 2 top diplomat Wendy Sherman can achieve in her visit to China, but she can at least expect a nice dinner.

Not that Beijing has high hopes for her trip to reverse a free-falling relationship – there is no sign that China will roll out the red carpet for the US deputy secretary of state and Chinese media reports are succinct and straightforward, suggesting that the whole affair would be conducted in a low-profile manner. Even modest hopes for progress were undercut after Beijing levelled sanctions on seven individuals and organisations late on Friday just before the meeting.

But observers say Sherman will at least be in for a nice dinner. Still annoyed by the fiery meeting between two sides in Alaska in March, Beijing will be making a subtle dig at Washington, signalling that China knows how to treat a guest.

Yang Jiechi, China’s top diplomat, famously said after the Alaska meeting that he could only have instant noodles for dinner.

“Chinese are always making jokes that when Yang wasn’t even hosted for dinner, he had to bring his own instant noodles,” said Zhiqun Zhu, chairman of the international relations department at Bucknell University.

“The Chinese side will be a more respectable host and show off Tianjin’s hospitality.”

While Sherman will not be able to go to Beijing, which has been virtually closed to foreign visitors since the outbreak of the coronavirus, she will spend two days in Tianjin and be hosted by foreign vice-minister Xie Feng and Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said Tianjin was chosen “in consideration of quarantine arrangements and the fact that Tianjin is close to Beijing”, but some analysts said it may reflect a new approach to Chinese diplomacy.

The March meeting in Anchorage, Alaska – at which Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Yang argued rather pointedly in public – was far from the US centre of power.

And by having these talks outside the capital, Beijing may also be returning the US’ “favour”, observers said.

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As for the country’s most politically important city, Beijing officials are still not taking any chances even though the nation has largely contained the spread of the coronavirus epidemic as it rages elsewhere around the world. Most Beijing-bound international flights are still being directed to other cities where travellers will be quarantined before entering Beijing.

Since the pandemic, Chinese officials have moved most of the diplomatic activities out of the capital, with Wang Yi receiving his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov in Guangxi in March, South Korean Foreign Minister Chung Eui-yong in Fujian province in April, central European top diplomats in Guizhou in May, and top diplomats from Asean in Chongqing in June.

China’s top climate envoy Xie Zhenhua met his US counterpart John Kerry, the last American senior official to visit China, in Shanghai in April.

Wu Xinbo, head of the Institute of International Studies at Fudan University, said Tianjin’s selection as a meeting site was more about geography than political calculations.

“It’s easy for Chinese officials to travel from Beijing to Tianjin,” Wu said.

“And with Sherman travelling from Mongolia, it’s also easier for her to travel to the northern city of Tianjin.”

Sherman’s stop in China comes after rounds of negotiations between the two sides on protocol. Sources said China was planning for Xie, who is in charge of US affairs, to meet Sherman and Wang, but Washington was hoping she could have greater access to President Xi Jinping’s inner circle.

It also comes after a number of US measures that have angered Chinese officials, including a declaration – in tandem with Britain and the European Union – that Beijing was behind this year’s cyberespionage attack on the Microsoft Exchange email server.

Wendy Cutler, vice-president at the Asia Society Policy Institute, said expectations should be low for the meeting.

“Nevertheless, it is an important first step in restoring communications at a senior level and laying the groundwork for a possible Biden-Xi meeting on the margins of the G20 meeting this [autumn],” Cutler said.

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And there might be progress on understanding each other’s intentions on a number of flashpoints, according to Sourabh Gupta, resident senior fellow at the Washington-based Institute for China-America Studies.

“Both sides want to deter bad behaviour or bad actions from the other side because of how unstable the relationship has been on these issues over the last 1½ years, particularly in regards to Taiwan but also South China Sea,” he said, citing a recent visit by former US foreign policy heavyweights to Taiwan as an example.

When Washington dispatched former US senator Chris Dodd and former deputy secretaries of state Richard Armitage and James Steinberg to the island in April, White House Indo-Pacific policy director Kurt Campbell was “very clear about the fact that he is not changing Taiwan policy per se”, Gupta said.

“Both sides are in a position to kind of reassure the other side of lines that will not be crossed, and it’s in that area that I think this conversation can get very productive,” he said.

But Zhu said that the meeting was happening at all after months of trans-Pacific sniping and chest thumping was a good start.

“That this meeting is taking place after some intense negotiations shows the two sides want to move the relationship forward and address serious concerns,” he said.

Additional reporting by Robert Delaney, Rachel Zhang and Jacob Fromer