WASHINGTON – Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said Thursday that despite the Russian invasion of Ukraine, China remains the biggest challenge for the United States and its allies, and that the Biden administration has to “shape the strategic environment” around the Asian superpower to limit it. their increasingly aggressive actions.
“China is the only country with the intention of reshaping the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military and technological power to do so,” Blinken said in a speech outlining the strategy. of the administration on China. “Beijing’s vision would take us away from the universal values that have underpinned much of the world’s progress over the past 75 years.”
The speech was a much shorter, public version of the administration’s secret strategy on China, which was largely completed last fall. U.S. officials have concluded that decades of direct economic and diplomatic engagement to force the Chinese Communist Party to comply with the US-led order have largely failed, and Mr. Blinken said the goal now should be to form coalitions with other nations to limit the party’s influence and try to curb its aggression in this way.
“We can’t trust Beijing to change its trajectory,” he said. “Therefore, we will shape the strategic environment around Beijing to advance our vision of an open and inclusive international system.”
China’s statements before and during the Russian invasion of Ukraine have further clarified to US and European officials the difficulties of relating to Beijing. On February 4, two weeks before the invasion, President Vladimir V. Putin met with President Xi Jinping in Beijing as his two governments issued a 5,000-word statement announcing a “limitless” association with the aim of opposing international diplomatic and economic systems. supervised by the United States and its allies. Since the war began, the Chinese government has given strong diplomatic support to Russia by reiterating Mr. Putin in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and spreading misinformation and conspiracy theories that undermined the United States and Ukraine.
Read more about Biden’s trip to Asia
In his speech at George Washington University on “Investing, Aligning and Competing,” Mr. Blinken noted human rights abuses, repression of ethnic minorities, and the suppression of freedom of expression and assembly in the Xinjiang, Tibet, and Hong Kong regions. . In recent years, these issues have galvanized greater animosity toward China among Democratic and Republican politicians and policymakers. “We will continue to raise these issues and call for change,” he said.
Blinken reiterated long-standing US policy on Taiwan, despite President Biden’s statement in Tokyo on Monday that the United States had a “commitment” to engage militarily to defend Taiwan if China attacks the self-governing democratic island. . The U.S. government has for decades maintained a policy of “strategic ambiguity” in Taiwan, without saying whether it would directly defend the island of China. Mr Blinken said China’s recent actions towards Taiwan – trying to break the island’s diplomatic and international ties, for example, and sending fighter jets to the area – were “profoundly destabilizing”.
But Mr. Blinken stressed that despite growing concerns, the United States was not looking for a new Cold War and would not try to isolate China, the world’s second largest economy. He reiterated a point that Mr. Biden and his national security aides have done so since the presidential campaign of Mr. Biden 2020: areas of cooperation with China, such as climate change, health security and the global economy.
Mr. Blinken attributed China’s growth to the talent and hard work of the Chinese people, as well as the stability and timeliness of the rules on global trade and diplomacy created and shaped by the United States in what Washington calls order. international. “Probably no country in the world has benefited more from this than China,” he said. “But instead of using its power to strengthen and revitalize the laws, agreements, principles and institutions that made it possible for its success, so that other countries can also benefit, Beijing is undermining it.”
Following China’s accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001, which was backed by the United States, Beijing’s leaders made far-reaching changes to the nation’s planned economy to open up. even more so in foreign trade and investment, helping to transform China into one of the world’s leading companies. the poorest countries at their largest factory center and raising hundreds of millions of people to the global middle class. But China has come a long way from becoming the free-market democracy that many in the West have hoped for, and over the past decade, under Mr. Xi, the Communist Party and the Chinese state have shook hands even more. strong on the private market and individual liberties. .
Both Democrats and Republicans now see Chinese trade practices, including the government’s creation of heavily subsidized national champions and their acceptance of intellectual property theft, as one of the most important factors undermining US industry. .
The Biden administration introduced one of its key elements in its efforts to shape the economic environment around China, the Indo-Pacific economic framework, during Mr Biden’s visit to Tokyo this week. The United States and 12 Asian nations will try to negotiate new agreements to create more resilient supply chains, establish new rules on how electronic data is shared and stored, reduce greenhouse gas emissions from industry, and remove bureaucratic hurdles. trade, among other proposals. .
But skeptics say Washington’s ability to shape trade in the Asia-Pacific region may be limited because the framework is not a traditional trade deal that offers countries tariff reductions and more access to the lucrative US market. .
The Obama administration had proposed this agreement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and Biden had supported it. But some Democrats and Republicans in Congress who were concerned about its potential to send more jobs abroad opposed it. President Donald J. Trump withdrew the United States from the deal, although other Asian nations advanced with it, and China has since asked to join.