United States Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met for an hour on Saturday on the sidelines of the global security meet at Munich, but it does not seem to have been a friendly meeting, or even polite one. Blinken told off his Chinese counterpart. He told Wang that China would have to face serious consequences if it were to continue to give Russia lethal support in the Ukrainian war, and he said that the entry of the Chinese balloon into American air space was unacceptable.

The phrase “lethal support” is a euphemism for supply of Chinese weapons to Russia.  A State Department official briefing the press said, “The secretary was quite blunt in warning about the implications and consequences of China providing material support to Russia or assisting Russia with systematic sanctions evasion.” Blinken had himself talked about the issue of China’s support to Russia in an interview with American television network, NBC. He said, “There are various kinds of lethal assistance that they are at least contemplating providing, to include weapons.”

There is the implication that the US fears that apart from China supporting Russia by buying its oil, it is worried about supply of Chinese weapons to Russia. So far, the US-China rivalry was confined to economy, but now it is spilling over into the military sphere. While the US and European Union (EU) countries are providing both economic and military aid to Ukraine, the West does not want to block economic and military help to Russia. This is an indirect acknowledgement that China is also a military power to reckon with as Russia or Soviet Union once was.

Wang did not spare the Americans too. Xinhua, the Chinese news agency, reported that Wang told Blinken that shooting down of the balloon had damaged China-US relations and US has to change its ways to mend the relations. Speaking at the conference earlier, Wang was scathing in his description of the US response to the Chinese balloon in the American air space. He said, “To have despatched an advanced fighter jet to shoot down a balloon with a missile, such behaviour is unbelievable, almost hysterical.”

Both sides might be indulging in blunt-speak, but they are aware that they cannot allow their relationship to deteriorate beyond a point. The US wants China to remain neutral in the Russia-Ukraine war and on its part the US would not push too hard on the Taiwan front. That is, the Americans would not want to provoke China to take precipitate action against Taiwan. Secondly, the Americans also recognise the importance of Chinese economy in the world economy.

China is seen as a lynchpin, and the faltering of Chinese economy would seriously impact the global supply chain system. The faceoff between the two countries is to be enacted within parameters, and Washington and Beijing are aware of it.

But the constant bickering between the two holds the potential danger of spinning out of control. It would be necessary for the two sides to display restraint. The world is going through economic uncertainty, and the expected post-pandemic recovery has not happened evenly across the world. China has just declared that it has gone past COVID-19 after witnessing a huge resurgence late last year. But its economic growth is yet to regain momentum. Many countries are facing acute economic crisis, from Sri Lanka, Pakistan to Kenya and Tunisia and Lebanon.

Of course there are the examples of India, the UAE and Saudi Arabia which seem to be weathering the headwinds of global inflationary trends. The US-China relations should not disturb the frail economic situation in the world.