When senior U.S. and Chinese officials met last spring in Alaska to break the ice, things quickly devolved into a circus. While the meetings behind closed doors were far more professional, both sides put on a show for the reporters who were ushered into the room.
China’s top diplomat, Yang Jiechi, lectured the U.S. delegation on what he categorized as Washington’s bullying. Secretary of State Antony Blinken fired back, referencing China’s cyberattacks and economic coercion. The whole thing was a diplomatic boxing match. As expected, nothing was resolved. The U.S.-China relationship hasn’t gotten any less hostile since then, which is the best reason one can offer in support of exploring another round of high-level talks.
According to the Financial Times, Washington and Beijing are in preliminary discussions about scheduling a series of meetings between their senior officials. Talks are underway to dispatch Blinken to next week’s G-20 meeting in Italy to break bread with Wang Yi, the Chinese foreign minister. President Joe Biden, who last spoke with Chinese President Xi Jinping over the phone in February, could meet in person on the sidelines of the full G-20 summit this October. National security adviser Jake Sullivan suggested a Biden-Xi sit-down is only a matter of time — in Sullivan’s own words, “It’s now a question of when and how.”
The prospect of U.S.-China engagement comes at a time when bilateral ties are increasingly described in existential terms. In a town best summarized as a hot, sticky, gridlocked swamp where nothing gets done, Washington, D.C., is practically united on the need to combat Beijing across all policy domains. Policymakers and lawmakers are now selling their domestic initiatives as a way to compete with the Chinese Communist Party. Indeed, Biden continues to market his $1.7 billion infrastructure proposal as an extension of his China policy. “If we don’t act, we’re just going to fall further behind,” deputy national security adviser Daleep Singh told NPR in April. “China spends three times as much on infrastructure as a share of GDP than we do.”
Competition is the name of the game. Competition, however, is different than confrontation, which takes the form of a zero-sum contest for global power a la the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Although Biden insists otherwise, his administration has reinforced this zero-sum frame on a weekly basis. It claims democracies are in a worldwide struggle with autocracies. While rhetoric such as this plays well for a domestic audience, it makes the development of a pragmatic relationship with China (the administration’s goal) more unlikely.
Right now, U.S.-China relations are anything but pragmatic. The two powers view one another more as adversaries than competitors. A political domain in which success is measured not in maintaining a reasonable balance of power but rather in enhancing influence at each other’s expense. It’s not a stretch to imagine this mentality someday leading to a conflict neither country wants nor can afford to fight. U.S. and Chinese forces in the South China Sea are already engaged in tense encounters.
True, a Biden-Xi summit won’t resolve the systemic issues weighing down the bilateral relationship. A large part of the problem is structural in nature, in which a resurgent China (like other rising powers throughout history) is seeking to capitalize on its strength. But if there is an opportunity for the heads of state to move away from the Cold War framework now dominating the discourse. It’s an opportunity that Biden and Xi would be foolish to miss.
Daniel DePetris (@DanDePetris) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. His opinions are his own.
