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US-China relations
OpinionComment
Xu Xiaobing
Xu Xiaobing

Opinion | A confident China reminds the US it is a force to reckon with

  • Both US and Chinese officials talked tough in Alaska, for the benefit of their home audiences
  • But Beijing went on to show it is in a position of strength, by imposing sanctions on Washington’s allies right after the Alaska meeting

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The opening session of US-China talks at the Captain Cook Hotel in Anchorage, Alaska on March 18. Photo: AP
Xu Xiaobing
On March 18, in freezing weather in Anchorage, Alaska, top diplomats from China and the United States met face to face for the first time since the Biden administration took over, albeit while sitting at white-cloth tables quite far from each other amid concerns over Covid-19, and perhaps political toxins.
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The socially distanced meeting started with an unexpected exchange of tough words, when opening remarks ran over the agreed eight minutes and went on for about 90 minutes in front of the cameras. 

Although the world was stunned by the unusually fiery exchange, which the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman later said had a “a strong smell of gunpowder”, this high-level meeting was just a dramatic representation of the current state of relations between China and the US.

Indeed, in the first two months of the Biden administration, bilateral relations largely stayed the same as during the Trump years. The only positive sign was the phone call between President Joe Biden and President Xi Jinping on the eve of the Spring Festival on February 11, which preceded the high-level dialogue in Alaska.

As former president Donald Trump’s legacy lingers in the US, it is not surprising that Biden administration officials felt they had to justify any positive outcome of this important bilateral meeting on home ground by openly taking a tough stance on China.

Their position was, in fact, inevitable. After all, according to the most recent Pew Research Centre survey, 90 per cent of Americans see China as a competitor and about half think it is urgent for the US to limit China’s power and influence. The pressure on Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, the top US envoys at the talks, is obvious.
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