China-US Relations: US Deputy Secretary of State’s visit to China without entering Beijing draws attention and analysis points to paving the way for Biden and Xi Jinping’s meeting-BBC News

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Sherman plans to visit Japan, South Korea and Mongolia from July 18th to 25th. The visit itinerary announced earlier did not include China, which triggered widespread speculation that the United States and China could not reach a consensus on the location, meeting, and other arrangements.

On the 22nd, Sherman decided to visit China on the way, but the destination was Tianjin, a municipality less than 100 kilometers away from the capital Beijing. In terms of meeting participants, in addition to China’s Deputy Foreign Minister Xie Feng, Foreign Minister Wang Yi will also meet with Sherman in Tianjin.

Professor Zhu Zhiqun, head of the Department of International Relations at Bucknell University in the United States, told BBC Chinese that this arrangement shows that “both sides have made concessions.”

The British “Financial Times” reported on the 15th that Sherman had requested a peer-to-peer meeting with Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Le Yucheng during his visit to China, but China sent Vice Minister Xie Feng to receive him, and the United States temporarily suspended the visit plan.

Le Yucheng ranks second only to ministers and secretaries in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China, and Xie Feng ranks fifth among deputy ministers, but he is in charge of North America, Oceania and Latin America affairs.

Reuters quoted a senior US official on the 22nd as saying, “Our high-level interaction is a precious resource, so we hope to ensure that we can have substantive and constructive exchanges with senior Chinese officials.”

The official also said that “arranging to meet with Wang Yi is exactly what we want.”

This will be the second face-to-face contact between US and Chinese high-level officials after US President Biden took office.

The two countries held their first high-level meeting in Alaska in March this year. The two sides blamed each other on China’s activities in the South China Sea, human rights issues, and the new crown pandemic. The United States sent its special envoy for climate issues, John Kerry, to Shanghai in April. In addition to limited contacts, the two countries have confronted each other in multiple areas. Just a few days ago, the United States and its allies jointly accused China of conducting a cyber attack on the Microsoft Exchange mail server.

Ma Zhao, an associate professor of East Asia at Washington University in St. Louis, told BBC Chinese, “At present, the US-China relationship has not broken the ice, lacks the necessary trust, and is unwilling to give up their original positions. Especially after the Alaska talks, both sides broke up unhappy. It is doubtful whether the other party has the sincerity of the talks and the willingness to adjust the policy, so the itinerary will have twists and turns.”

He believes that China’s selection of a location in Tianjin “is likely to be the basic way of reciprocating the China-US Alaska meeting. Neither of the two higher-level Chinese officials was able to go to Washington to meet with the diplomats of the new Biden administration. The US Deputy Secretary of State did not make a special trip to visit China during this trip, so it is impossible for her to visit Beijing.”

Liu Yawei, editor-in-chief of the “China-US Impressions” website under the Carter Center in the United States, told the BBC Chinese that the site selection may be due to the epidemic, perhaps to allow the local government to undertake more foreign affairs tasks, or to express the great importance of the U.S. policy toward China. dissatisfied. “If China really has the intention of lowering the protocol in terms of protocol, then Sherman’s failure to address the issue of location is commendable-dialogue is more meaningful than confrontation.”

Liu Yawei believes that Sherman’s itinerary reversed after twists and turns “means that both China and the United States are aware that the degree of deterioration in relations and lack of dialogue may lead to misunderstandings and misjudgments.”

The U.S. State Department stated that the meeting was “part of an effort to promote frank exchanges between the U.S. and Chinese officials to promote U.S. interests and values, and to manage the relations between the two countries responsibly.”

“The Deputy Secretary of State will discuss areas where we have serious concerns about China’s actions and areas where the interests of both parties overlap,” the statement added.

A spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, “China will express to the United States its principled position on the development of Sino-US relations and its firm attitude in safeguarding its own sovereignty, security and development interests, and demand that the United States stop interfering in China’s internal affairs and harm China’s interests.”

The two sides have yet to specify the specific issues to be discussed.

Liu Yawei believes that there are many topics for dialogue between China and the United States, the most important of which is the Taiwan Strait issue. He said, “China may point out that the United States is right and wrong on the one-China issue, and emphasizes that the United States had better not hit China’s bottom line so unscrupulously.”

US military aircraft and special military aircraft landed in Taiwan three times within two months. On June 6, three U.S. senators took a huge military plane to Taiwan. This month, the United States sent special planes to land at Taipei Airport twice. The high frequency has caused concerns about the escalation of the situation across the Taiwan Strait.

Liu Yawei also said that from the perspective of stabilizing the overall situation of Sino-US relations, China and the United States should actively but pragmatically find areas of cooperation, such as climate issues or the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

Song Wendi, a researcher at the Australian Centre on China in the World, told BBC Chinese that the specific matters discussed in this visit are less important than the political signals it sends.

“The function of the Deputy Secretary of State is more to build mutual trust politically rather than to negotiate business,” he said. The topics that may be discussed include how to build mutual trust on the East China Sea security issue, how to manage the “Belt and Road” and “reconstruction and more”. The dispute between the two initiatives “Build Back Better” and so on.

Analysis believes that Sherman’s visit to China will help ease bilateral relations or pave the way for the “Xi visit meeting.” But whether the conflict between the two sides can be substantially improved does not seem to be optimistic.

Recently, the US President’s national security adviser, Jacob Sullivan, said on a conference call that US President Biden will look for opportunities to contact Chinese President Xi Jinping. He said that both sides will attend the G20 summit in Italy in October, which may become a venue for negotiations.

Ma Zhao also believes that one of the important topics of Sherman’s visit is to pave the way for the exchange of visits between the two heads of state. “Before the heads of state meet, the two sides must reach agreement on many substantive issues to avoid the collapse of the heads of state talks.”

Song Wendi told reporters that this visit will establish the practice of mutual visits by senior officials of the United States and China during Biden’s administration. “It is very helpful for restoring the normalization of transactional diplomacy.”

He believes that one of the main purposes of this visit is to confirm whether there is enough political mutual trust between the two sides for the leaders to meet, “trying to pave the way for bilateral summits is affirmative.”

Zhu Zhiqun believes that Sherman’s level is not high enough to directly discuss summit affairs, but this visit “will establish a communication channel with China.”