US and China are talking again, hoping for a breakthrough

Daniel DePetris, Tribune News Service

Whenever the topic of China comes up for discussion, President Joe Biden’s administration has a talking point waiting in its back pocket: While the US and China are global competitors, Washington seeks to ensure that relations are managed responsibly so “competition doesn’t veer into conflict.”  US officials, from Secretary of State Antony Blinken to national security adviser Jake Sullivan, have used this phrase so often that it has become a predictable tagline at news briefings and public events on US-China policy.  Yet even talking points ring true once in a while. The very real sentiment across the US national security apparatus is that ties with China, the world’s second-largest economy and second-largest military spender, are in a delicate state and need to be handled with the utmost care. Key to this objective is face-to-face communication with the Chinese officials who actually matter.

Not so long ago, getting high-ranking Chinese Communist Party officials on the phone was about as difficult as getting out of Chicago in Friday afternoon traffic. Beijing, irate about then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s 2022 trip to Taiwan, cut off most senior- and working-level communication with Washington on areas as diverse as maritime safety, defense and narcotics. Then came the 2023 “balloon-gate” episode, in which a large Chinese surveillance balloon meandered over the continental United States, creating a media frenzy that ended only after Biden ordered an F-22 fighter jet to shoot it down. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin attempted to resurrect talks with his Chinese counterpart months later but got nothing more than a cursory handshake.

The frostiness, however, has melted as of late. Both sides seem to have concluded that icing each other out hasn’t done their respective strategies any good. The change of heart isn’t about making nice with the other side as much as it is about minimizing any disagreements that exist — and there are a boatload of them — and finding areas on the margins where both countries can explore common ground.  Last November, Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping met just outside San Francisco and agreed to reopen the dialogue channels that were previously shut down.  There have been so many in-person interactions between US and Chinese officials lately that it’s hard to keep track. In April, Blinken travelled to Beijing to meet with Xi and followed up those talks with another session in July, where he spoke with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. In May, Austin finally met with his counterpart, Chinese Defense Minister Dong Jun, where he emphasized “the importance of maintaining open lines of military-to-military communication” between the two superpowers, the White House said. Sullivan had two days of discussions in August with Xi, Wang and Gen. Zhang Youxia, vice chairman of the Central Military Commission.

And last week, Adm. Samuel Paparo, the top military officer for US forces in the Indo-Pacific, held a video conference with Gen. Wu Yanan, China’s commander of the Southern Theater Command, which covers the South China Sea.  If we didn’t know any better, we might think the roller coaster-like relationship between Washington and Beijing was on the upswing.  Unfortunately, the bad times are still very much here. Constant communication is one thing; solving problems or even finding common ground on a specific issue is something else entirely. And right now, the US and China are doing a lot of the former and very little of the latter. Both powers are using renewed dialogue channels to reiterate their core positions and lecture each other about why the other needs to change their policies.

Indeed, on the big items of dispute — Taiwan, the South China Sea, arms control, the war in Ukraine — the US and China are still talking past one another.  The Taiwan issue is the most fraught, and it’s highly unlikely the US and China will be able to come to any agreement on it in the near future — if ever. For Washington, the self-governed island is an oasis of democracy in East Asia, one that could live in peace and tranquility if it weren’t for Chinese military saber-rattling. Beijing, of course, views Taiwan as a renegade province led by a particularly rambunctious president named Lai Ching-te, also known as William Lai, who would love nothing more than to declare the island’s independence from mainland China.

The South China Sea is just as fraught, with China pressing its expansive maritime claims through increasingly aggressive tactics and the US continuing to make clear that any armed attack against a US ally such as the Philippines would necessitate a US response.

Meanwhile, talks on arms control or risk reduction measures — the Pentagon assesses that Beijing could have as many as 1,500 nuclear warheads by 2035 — are in purgatory, with Chinese officials stressing that Washington has to come down to Beijing’s level before serious negotiations can begin.  At first, the war in Ukraine was a tertiary issue for the US and China. Yet as the conflict approaches its third winter, the Biden administration is getting more vocal about the extent of Chinese assistance to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war machine.