China Briefing | Beijing must recognise its own mistakes in US-China relations

Name: Biden to approach US-China relations with ‘patience’, says White House
Uploaded: 2021-01-30T01:30:15.000Z
Duration: 1 min 4 s
Description: Biden to approach US-China relations with ‘patience’, says White House

While Biden ponders what went wrong from Washington’s end, Beijing should remember: it takes two to tango

Even if Hong Kong, Taiwan, South China Sea are off limits, Beijing should forget the hubris, rein in Wolf Warriors and be transparent about the Uygurs

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A watchtower on a high-security facility near a ‘re-education centre’ in China’s Xinjiang region. Photo: AFP

Wang Xiangwei

Published: 9:30am, 30 Jan 2021Updated: 3:20pm, 30 Jan 2021

As Washington searches for new thinking and policy innovation to reset its fraught ties with Beijing, the White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Monday said that President Joe Biden wanted to approach relations with China with “patience”.

Her interesting choice of the word “patience” has set tongues wagging among Chinese officials and analysts about what that really means. Some think it is that Biden needs a lengthy comprehensive review of his predecessor’s destructive China policies of the past four years. Others believe it indicates that Biden’s top priority in his first 100 days is on the home front trying to bring the coronavirus pandemic under control and heal the political divide and that he will probably need more time to work on his new approach towards China.

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Biden to approach US-China relations with ‘patience’, says White House

While Beijing waits patiently for Washington to finish its review, a lingering question at the back of many people’s minds is whether Beijing should also undertake a lengthy and serious review of its own policies towards Washington, more specifically, whether Beijing has recognised and learned from its own mistakes which contributed to the fractures and fault lines in the relationship.

It remains unclear if Beijing has already begun its own review. Even if it has already begun, there is no way of telling as there is little public discussion of it.

It is very much necessary for Beijing to review its own policies and behaviour in the face of growing international resistance. After all, as the saying goes, it takes two to tango.

Biden’s new administration now provides an opportunity, which Beijing should grasp not only to steer ties back to a less confrontational track but to strengthen its ties with other Western countries and major trading partners in Asia including Japan and Australia.

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