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By Micah McCartney
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The U.S. must accept China's red lines if they are to cooperate on any of the world's challenges, the Chinese Embassy's No. 2 said as the two countries eye a possible meeting between President Joe Biden and Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping to try to thaw relations.
Speaking at the Institute for China-American Studies' (ICAS) annual conference Tuesday, Deputy Chief of Mission Xu Xueyuan recalled past achievements that were the product of U.S.-China collaboration. She said "win-win" cooperation was needed again to address climate change, the Israel-Hamas conflict, global health, artificial intelligence, and other issues.
First, however, there needs to be mutual respect, and the U.S. must accept China's red lines, the diplomat said. The core interests include democracy and human rights, China's economic system and path to development, and the biggest core issue: Taiwan. If these are not respected, it's impossible to work together on other issues, she said.
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All three of the "red lines" are points of contention between the world's largest and second-largest economies amid an ongoing trade war, tech war, criticism of Chinese forced technology transfers, and sanctions on Chinese officials and entities involved in what the U.S. State Department has called a genocide against Muslim minorities in China's Xinjiang region. The U.S. is the biggest supplier of weapons to democratically ruled Taiwan, which China has for decades threatened to annex, through force if necessary.
Xu leveled criticism at the U.S., which she said is unwilling to accept an "economically stronger China," and complained that China has become a convenient scapegoat in American politics. She contrasted that with China's foreign policy, which she said is driven not so much by politics but by the aspirations of the country's "1.4 billion people."
Johns Hopkins University professor emeritus of China Studies David Lampton, who joined Xu for the talk, said that any forward momentum in the world's most important relationship would have to come soon, before the political posturing of the 2024 election cycle.
Lampton said the prospect of a Biden-Xi meeting by the end of the year ought to be "low hanging fruit." A rapprochement with China is unlikely be a top priority for the next House speaker, so it may fall on the two leaders to appoint people "to solve the problem and not come back till they have solved the problem."
The White House reportedly hopes for a Biden-Xi meeting, likely during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco in mid-November. Biden met with Xi a number of times while he was vice president during the Obama administration but only once, briefly, as president on the sidelines of last year's G20 summit in Indonesia.
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