{"id":80993,"date":"2023-07-07T11:45:49","date_gmt":"2023-07-07T01:45:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=80993"},"modified":"2023-07-07T13:41:55","modified_gmt":"2023-07-07T03:41:55","slug":"blinkens-visit-to-china-accomplished-little-but-means-a-lot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/blinkens-visit-to-china-accomplished-little-but-means-a-lot\/","title":{"rendered":"Blinken\u2019s visit to China accomplished little but means a lot"},"content":{"rendered":"
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To the extent that Australia\u2019s relations with China are influenced by the state of US\u2013China relations, Secretary of State Antony Blinken\u2019s visit to Beijing in mid-June makes the prospect of a visit to China by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese this year more likely. Blinken\u2019s visit didn\u2019t achieve any breakthroughs. It wasn\u2019t expected to. But it went smoothly, if a little frostily at times, and should act as a brake of some sort on the deterioration of US\u2013China relations. Both sides had recognised that the relationship was at its lowest point in decades and wanted to signal to the rest of the world that they were seeking to relieve some of the tension.<\/p>\n

That doesn\u2019t mean, of course, that US\u2013China relations will significantly improve. Structural problems in the relationship remain, and they\u2019re substantial. The key issues are China\u2019s actions around Taiwan and in the South China Sea, US bans on high-level technology exports to China and human rights. Blinken did reaffirm US support for the one-China policy and opposition to Taiwanese independence, and stressed that the US was pursuing de-risking of its economic relations, not decoupling. (The US defines de-risking as securing resilient supply chains for critical technologies, protecting the most advanced technologies with military applications, and investing in its own industrial capacity in critical areas of technology. China clearly doesn\u2019t accept that approach.)<\/p>\n

Blinken was unable to secure Chinese agreement to re-establishing military-crisis communication links. Given the severing of military exchanges in recent years, and the potential for military crises to occur in the East and South China Seas, this was a disappointment.<\/p>\n

Blinken\u2019s meeting with Xi Jinping was relatively short but important. Had it not happened, only days after Xi met Bill Gates, it would have been a real snub and a bad sign. The meeting was apparently congenial, with both Xi and Blinken stressing the need for more diplomacy. But it was carefully choreographed by the Chinese to signal that Blinken wasn\u2019t meeting Xi on an equal footing. Unlike the usual practice in which Xi meets foreign visitors in the classic horseshoe configuration, which implies some level of equality between the interlocutors, this time Xi sat at the head of a table with Blinken and the Chinese officials sitting opposite one another in positions signalling lower status. That accorded with China\u2019s characterisation of the visit as one sought by the US as a supplicant (a minor point, perhaps, but illustrative of how China seeks to demonstrate the high ground in its relations with the US).<\/p>\n

This move to arrest of the downturn in US\u2013China relations is an encouraging development for Australia, and will make Albanese\u2019s decision to visit Beijing a little less vexed when the time comes. Whatever Canberra might say about Australia having an independent foreign policy, China sees it as following the US lead. Thus, bad relations between the US and China will have an impact on how China views Australia. Conversely, better US\u2013China relations will have some positive flow-on effect on how China views relations with Australia. This is a fact of life in alliance and major-power relationships.<\/p>\n

A slowdown in the deterioration of US\u2013China relations, while helpful, doesn\u2019t remove all the impediments to a more stable Australia\u2013China relationship. There are significant bilateral issues unrelated to external factors that will need to be addressed to reduce the domestic political complications around a prime ministerial visit. The two main ones are the continued detention in China of Australian citizens Cheng Lei and Yang Hengjun, and the continuing Chinese sanctions on certain Australian exports. For the prime minister to visit China and not achieve some demonstrable progress on these issues would be difficult for him to sell at home. On the positive side, some trade sanctions are already being lifted and further progress shouldn\u2019t be difficult for the Chinese government in the lead-up to an Albanese visit.<\/p>\n

However, the cases of the two detained Australians are apparently more difficult for the Chinese government because, it claims, they involve matters of state security. However, more so than trade sanctions, these issues have a personal and emotional character that strikes a chord among many Australians. Without more information about their situation and about the charges they face, and without their at least having access to their families, this will remain a difficult issue that could stand in the way of a successful Albanese visit to China.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To the extent that Australia\u2019s relations with China are influenced by the state of US\u2013China relations, Secretary of State Antony Blinken\u2019s visit to Beijing in mid-June makes the prospect of a visit to China by …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1762,"featured_media":80995,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2212,392,2380],"class_list":["post-80993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-australia-china-relations","tag-taiwan","tag-us-china-relations"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nBlinken\u2019s visit to China accomplished little but means a lot | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/blinkens-visit-to-china-accomplished-little-but-means-a-lot\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Blinken\u2019s visit to China accomplished little but means a lot | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"To the extent that Australia\u2019s relations with China are influenced by the state of US\u2013China relations, Secretary of State Antony Blinken\u2019s visit to Beijing in mid-June makes the prospect of a visit to China by ...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/blinkens-visit-to-china-accomplished-little-but-means-a-lot\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/ASPI.org\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2023-07-07T01:45:49+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2023-07-07T03:41:55+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/GettyImages-1258808437.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1024\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"676\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Colin Heseltine\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@ASPI_org\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@ASPI_org\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Colin Heseltine\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/\",\"name\":\"The Strategist\",\"description\":\"ASPI's analysis and commentary site\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-AU\"},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-AU\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/blinkens-visit-to-china-accomplished-little-but-means-a-lot\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/GettyImages-1258808437.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/GettyImages-1258808437.jpg\",\"width\":1024,\"height\":676,\"caption\":\"US Secretary of State Antony Blinken (L) attends a meeting with China's President Xi Jinping (R) at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on June 19, 2023. 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