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President Biden and his allies spent much of the G7 summit in Hiroshima, Japan, announcing a new weapons package for Ukraine, including a pipeline to supply F-16 fighter jets. He spent hours discussing strategy with President Volodymyr Zelensky for the next phase of the hot war initiated by Russia.
It was easy to miss Mr. Biden’s prediction on Sunday about the coming “look” in relations with Beijing, as both sides went beyond the so-called “stupid” action of China sending a giant surveillance balloon over the United States, just the latest in a series of incidents that has fueled what seems like a descent into confrontation.
It’s too far to say that the president’s optimism is based on the quiet signals he’s received in behind-the-scenes meetings with the Chinese government in recent weeks.
Mr. Biden’s own aides see a struggle in China between factions that want to restart economic ties with the United States and more powerful groups aligned with President Xi Jinping’s emphasis on national security over economic growth. As demonstrated this weekend, China is extremely sensitive to suggestions that the West is mounting a challenge to Beijing’s influence and power.
So if Mr. Biden is right, it may take some time for the ice to melt.
Faced with new and unified principles from key Western allies and Japan on how to protect key supply chains and technology from Beijing – contained in a communiqué at the end of the meeting – China erupted in anger.
Beijing opposes what it describes as a cabal that wants to isolate and weaken China’s power. The Japanese ambassador in Beijing was summoned for reaming, and China moved to ban products from Micron Technology, an American chip maker, because the products posed a security risk to the Chinese people. It sounds like the “economic coercion” promised by world leaders.
Mr. Biden has often said he does not want to see a new cold war start with China. And he pointed out that the economic interdependence between Beijing and the West is so complex that the dynamic between the two countries is very different from what happened when he first studied foreign policy as a newly elected senator, 50 years ago. .
The harmony in Hiroshima on developing a common approach, and the outburst from Beijing that followed, show that Mr. Biden has made progress on one of his highest foreign policy priorities despite tensions among allies. Instead of remaining at odds, the leaders of the major industrial democracies are making an approach to China in a way that Beijing can clearly threaten, some analysts noted after the meeting.
“One indication that Washington will be happy is that Beijing is not very happy,” said Michael Fullilove, executive director of the Lowy Institute, a research group in Sydney, Australia.
Matthew Pottinger, former deputy national security adviser to President Donald J. Trump, and the architect of that administration’s approach to China, agreed. “The fact that Beijing is so sensitive about the G7 statement is an indication that the allies are moving in the right direction.”
Mr Biden and other G7 leaders – which include Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan – wrote the first joint statement on principles on how to resist economic blackmail and prevent China from threatening or invading Taiwan, while seeking to reassure Beijing that they were not seeking confrontation.
The communique emphasized China’s usual points of stress, including its military buildup in the South China Sea and widely documented human rights abuses against Uygur and other Muslims in Xinjiang. Four months after the United States quietly began leaking intelligence to its European allies suggesting that China was considering sending weapons to Russia to support its war in Ukraine, the document also served as a warning to Beijing not to press for “no-holds-barred” ties with Russia. away.
However, the democracy has also opened the door to improving relations with Beijing by making it clear that it is not trying a Cold War strategy against its advanced economies, even as it seeks to exclude China from key technologies – including those made by Europe. a critical engine for producing the world’s most advanced semiconductors.
“Our policy approach is not designed to undermine China nor does it seek to hinder China’s economic progress and development,” the communique said. “China that develops according to international rules will be of global interest. We are not decoupling or turning internally. At the same time, we know that economic resilience requires risk and diversification.
“De-risking” is a new term of art, coined by Europeans, to describe the strategy of reducing dependence on the Chinese supply chain without “decoupling”, the separation of more severe economic ties. Mr. Biden’s team has embraced the phrase, and the strategy — intended to protect itself rather than punish — has become a staple of recent conversations about how to deal with Beijing. Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, spoke of “building a tall fence around a small yard” to describe the key technological safeguards that could rapidly expand China’s military buildup.
But what looks like risk reduction in the United States and Europe may look like a good containment strategy in Beijing.
The deal reached in Hiroshima came after what Michael J. Green, a former Asia adviser to President George W. Bush, called “a series of diplomatic victories for the US and losses for China.” He has been working behind the scenes to promote rapprochement between South Korea and Japan, and plans to join Japan in the consultative group on nuclear strategy and deterrence that was announced during a visit to the country last month by Yoon Suk Yeol. If successful, it would create a tighter nuclear alliance in China’s neighborhood.
“From Beijing’s perspective, this has been a week where other powers in the region are closer to the United States,” said Mr Green, now chief executive of the Center for United States Studies at the University of Sydney.
China pushed back hard. In a statement published over the weekend, he accused the G7 of “impeding international peace,” “undermining and attacking China” and “violently interfering in China’s domestic affairs.” On the same day, he accused Micron of “relatively serious cyber security issues” that could threaten national security, the same argument the US has made regarding TikTok and Huawei.
Despite the public background in Hiroshima, Mr. Biden’s decision to cancel the second half of his trip to the Pacific, including a stop in Papua New Guinea, so he could rush home to deal with domestic spending and debt negotiations, was seen as a setback. in competition with China.
Now the question is whether, quietly, Mr. Biden can rebuild the relationship with Mr. Xi that seemed to go back to last fall, after the first meeting.
Mr. Biden mentioned the spy balloon incident in an interesting way on Sunday.
“Then this stupid balloon carrying two freight cars of spying equipment flew over the United States, and it was shot down, and everything changed about talking to each other,” he said. “I think you’ll see that start to thaw very soon.
If there is a discussion, it is probably a result of Mr. Sullivan’s discussion in Vienna this month with Wang Yi, the Chinese foreign policy official.
The sessions were hardly warm, but in some ways, they were more honest and more useful than American officials expected. Instead of simply giving a speech, as he usually does when he meets his Chinese counterparts, Mr. Wang spoke in more unscripted terms than usual, according to officials familiar with the talks. There is an outpouring of complaints on both sides that Biden’s team hopes will help clear the air.
There was a special long conversation about Ukraine and Taiwan. Wang stressed that China is not seeking conflict with Taiwan, apparently trying to placate American officials who last summer feared that China might accelerate plans to resolve disputes over Taiwan by force.
Mr. Wang raised the need to avoid precipitous action regarding the election in Taiwan early next year. Mr Sullivan stressed that China’s own actions raised the temperature and increased the risk of escalation.
Administration officials hope to return to more regular dialogue with China, possibly sending Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo to China, and eventually rescheduling a trip to Beijing by Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, who canceled a visit after spy balloon episode. There is talk of a meeting between Mr. Biden and Mr. Xi in the fall.
But the war in Ukraine will continue to overshadow that relationship — and so will the relationship between Moscow and Beijing, which one of Mr. Biden’s aides called “an alliance of the suffering.” But for the moment, US officials have taken comfort that China has not, as far as they know, provide lethal weapons to Russia despite President Vladimir V. Putin’s need for armaments.
David Pierson contributed reporting.
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