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The place the phone call came from spoke volumes. When Biden’s Indo-Pacific coordinator asked a group of Washington journalists to update them on Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s upcoming visit in the middle of last week, he was high above the South China Sea on his way from India to Japan. Nevertheless, Kurt Campbell didn’t have much to say. At least not much new.
Different perspectives
The fact that the United States is making great efforts to stand up to China is constantly being mentioned by President Biden himself and everyone in his administration who is somehow involved in the matter. That the US was not looking for “a conflict” and “no new Cold War” either. They hardly explain exactly how they intend to prevent their “competition” with China from ending in a conflict. Because the United States is desperately looking for exactly this key. Even Foreign Minister Blinken did not find him during his visit, despite a meeting with President Xi.
“Intense competition requires intense diplomacy if tensions are to remain manageable,” says Indo-Pacific Coordinator Kurt Campell. “We want to set up mechanisms for crisis communication in order to reduce the risk of conflicts.”
From Beijing, however, it sounds less conciliatory: What the USA would do is “not so-called responsible competition, but an extremely irresponsible hegemonic behavior that inevitably pushes China and the USA in the direction of confrontation,” said a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry before the visit.
Direct connection is still missing
Biden’s Foreign Minister Blinken’s trip to Beijing can certainly be seen as a step towards a more constructive exchange. China and the US want to resume high-level dialogue, which they suspended after the balloon affair earlier this year. And Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang not only took seven and a half hours to talk to Blinken, he also accepted his invitation to a return visit to Washington.
Despite this, the US has not achieved a key goal. At the latest, after the American generals wanted to call Beijing during the balloon affair at the beginning of the year – when a suspected Chinese spy balloon flew across the USA before the USA shot it down after days of excitement – and nobody on the other side answered the call, the Americans realized that a direct “red wire” is needed. But even Xi Blinken does not want to fulfill this wish so far.