China refused to establish a crisis communications channel with U.S. military officials despite Washington's warnings that its absence raises the risk of “an unintentional conflict” between the powers.
“It’s absolutely vital that we have these kind of communications, military to military,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters Monday in Beijing. “And at this moment, China has not agreed to move forward with that.”
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That message fell on deaf ears throughout Blinken’s trip to Beijing despite Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang’s assessment that “the China-U.S. relationship is at the lowest point since its establishment.” Yet Chinese General Secretary Xi Jinping touted the visit as a “very good” encounter for the two rivals, even as Blinken defended U.S. restrictions on the regime’s access to sensitive American technology and Beijing held out the specter of a possible Taiwan crisis if the United States does not acquiesce to its demands regarding the island democracy.
“A choice needs to be made between dialogue and confrontation, and cooperation and conflict,” the Chinese Communist Party’s top foreign policy official, Wang Yi, told Blinken, according to a Chinese readout. “On the Taiwan question, China has no room for compromise or concession.”
Blinken, for his part, rebuffed Chinese complaints about U.S. sanctions on technology exports to China, although he maintained that Washington wants to preserve strong business ties between the world’s two largest economies.
“It’s not in our interest to provide technology to China that could be used against us,” Blinken told reporters. “So, what this is about, again, is not trying to cut off, eliminate, hinder economic relations. On the contrary, we think that they should be strengthened but in a way that looks out for our workers, that looks out for our companies.”
The trip was a long-awaited one for Blinken, who intended to travel to Beijing in February but scrapped the itinerary when an apparent Chinese surveillance balloon was detected over U.S. airspace. And Blinken issued a forecast for more high-level meetings over the coming year, which will also see President Joe Biden host Xi and other world leaders for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco in November.
“I would expect additional visits by senior U.S. officials to China over the coming weeks,” Blinken said. “And we welcome further visits by Chinese officials to the United States. To that end, I invited State Councilor and Foreign Minister Qin Gang to visit Washington, and he agreed to come at a mutually suitable time.”
The lack of contact between U.S. and Chinese defense officials has been a point of open dispute for the two sides and anxiety for Washington. Chinese defense officials have gone silent on their American counterparts, while Chinese fighter pilots and naval commanders have instigated an alarming increase in close calls between the two militaries near Taiwan and in the South China Sea — a trend that the U.S. regards as a deliberate effort to pressure Biden “to abandon our alliances and partnerships, and leave,” as one of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s top advisers assessed recently.
"These military-to-military contacts are hugely important if we're going to avoid an unintentional conflict, and that was only reinforced over the last couple of weeks," Blinken told NPR during the trip. "We've seen ... incidents on the seas, in the skies that were really dangerous and, in our judgment, unprofessional.”
Nonetheless, Xi, who met with his U.S. guest on Monday after Blinken conducted marathon meetings with his foreign ministry counterparts, applauded the significance of the trip.
“The two sides have also made progress and reached the agreement on some specific issues,” he said. “This is very good.”
Still, Chinese state media characterized the discussions as an example of Beijing keeping the proverbial gun on the table, particularly as Taiwan heads into an election season that the communist regime wants to result in the defeat of the ruling liberal party.
“Also, [the] Chinese side clearly pointed out the wrongdoings of the U.S. in handling China relations,” as Fudan University’s Wu Xinbo told Global Times, a hawkish state media outlet. "If the U.S. continues selling weapons or increasing high-level interactions with [incumbent Taiwanese] authorities in the island, where elections will take place next year, we'll surely take countermeasures, which will not only make the situation in the Taiwan Strait unstable but also heavily affect China-U.S. relations.”
As Blinken wrapped up his meetings in Beijing, it was reported that Taiwanese analysts would participate in a tabletop military exercise hosted by a semiofficial Japanese think tank.
“This is the first time experts from Taiwan will work with their U.S. and Japanese counterparts on tabletop simulations,” Japan Forum for Strategic Studies senior analyst Su Tzu-yun told the South China Morning Post. “Participants are also expected to analyze military scenarios in the Taiwan Strait and East and South China seas and come up with proposals on how the ‘blue team’ could deal with the threats from the ‘red team.’”
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Blinken affirmed that the U.S. does not “support Taiwan independence” but still insists on “peaceful resolution of cross-strait differences” in defiance of Beijing’s pledge to use force to subjugate the island by force if necessary.
“We and many others have deep concerns about some of the provocative actions that China has taken in recent years, going back to 2016,” Blinken said. “Fifty percent of commercial container traffic goes through the Taiwan Strait every day. Seventy percent of semiconductors are manufactured on Taiwan. If as a result of a crisis that was taken offline, it would have dramatic consequences for virtually every country around the world, which is, again, why there has been rising concern about some of the provocative actions that China has taken.”