Recently, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has payed a three-day visit to China and held talks with PRC President Xi Jinping and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. The visit of the head of American diplomacy was accompanied by reports that US-China relations are entering a new era, in which both superpowers will reject confrontation for the sake of ensuring stable and sustainable development of the planet.
However, the truth is that US foreign policy towards China has not changed and despite Blinken’s attempts at calming China, America’s general strategy has remained to “contain the Chinese threat” by encircling it through creating an Indo-Pacific NATO-like military infrastructure.
On the eve of Blinken’s visit to China, US President Joe Biden signed a new aid package to the country’s closest allies, which includes provisions on supplying $60 billion to Ukraine, $26 billion to Israel, and $8 billion to Taiwan. Additionally, shortly before the visit, the US bolstered its AUKUS military bloc. On April 9th, the US, Australia and Great Britain announced that they were considering adding new members to the bloc, namely, New Zealand, South Korea and Japan.
Additionally, the countries released a joint Defence Ministers declaration, which outlines their plans to increase cooperation within “Pillar 2” of the AUKUS agreement. It involves joint financing, developing, and production of advanced capabilities, sharing technology and increasing interoperability between the armed forces. Adding new members to AUKUS will enhance the bloc’s capabilities when it comes to artificial intelligence, electronic warfare, hypersonic weapons, etc.
What is more, the United States is increasing its military activity in the South China Sea and other maritime bodies encircling China. Over the last three months, it has conducted joint military drills with South Korea, Japan, Thailand, and the Philippines. The latter have been the biggest military drills between the two countries in the history of their relations.
Having carried out such preparation, Blinken came to Beijing with a set of threats, and warnings. His main complaint was the fact that China supplies Russia with critical components helping it in conducting the special military operation in Ukraine. “China is the number one supplier of the critical components for Russia to rebuild its defense industrial base– machine tools, microelectronics, optics and other things that are going right into a massive production of munitions, of weaponry, of tanks, of armored vehicles, which in turn are going into Ukraine”, said Blinken at a press-conference after the event.
This represents the hypocrisy of American diplomacy. After approving a near $100 billion package deal in support of Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, they criticize China for maintaining normal trade relations with Russia. Countless times, China has explicitly said that it does not support any party in the conflict in Ukraine and does not provide arms to Russia.
“China is neither the creator of the Ukraine crisis nor a party to it. We never fan the flames or seek selfish gains, and we will certainly not accept being the scapegoat. <…> China’s right to conduct normal trade and economic exchanges with Russia and other countries should not be interfered with or disrupted”, said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin. The United States is trying to create division line between China and Russia over their normal trade relation, which is in violation of the principle of non-interference in the affairs of sovereign states.
Russia reacted to the visit with little attention. “China is an absolutely sovereign state, a powerful state that is able to defend and protect its interests,” said Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov commenting on Blinken’s threats against the PRC.
All in all, this visit has become a spectacle of hypocrisy and baseless complaints. The US is trying to control global trade relations, but it should understand that the unipolar moment has already become a thing of the past and it cannot be replicated in new circumstances, whereby China and Russia have developed a set of economic and political capabilities making them peer competitors to the US-dominated world order.
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