MESOPOTAMIA NEWS Top of the Agenda :  U.S. Confirms Plans for High-Level Meeting With China

– 11. March 2021

 The U.S. State Department announced that Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan will meet (SCMP) with China’s top diplomat, Yang Jiechi, and its foreign minister, Wang Yi, in Alaska on March 18. Blinken described the talks as an opportunity to lay out U.S. concerns about China’s actions and said subsequent dialogue is contingent on tangible progress.

The meeting will be the first in-person, top-level discussion with Chinese officials under President Joe Biden, whose administration has criticized China over issues including its crackdown in Hong Kong and abuse of Uyghur Muslims. Blinken has previously vowed (FT) to hold China accountable for abusing the international system. He will arrive in Anchorage after meeting with U.S. allies (NBC) Japan and South Korea. 

Analysis 

“The administration should heed the central lesson of five decades of U.S. policy toward China: it works best when focusing realistically on geopolitical objectives essential to protect American interests, and worst when attempting to engage in political engineering to promote American values,” Harvard University’s Graham Allison and Primavera Capital Group’s Fred Hu write for Foreign Affairs. 

“Realizing the benefits and rectifying the mistakes of the [Donald J.] Trump administration’s China policy is good only for the first one hundred days. The true test for the Biden administration is what it will do about China in the remaining 1,360,” CFR’s Elizabeth C. Economy writes.