(ASI) Last Thursday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken discussed in Beijing with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Foreign Minister Wang Yi. It was the first high-level diplomatic meeting between the two countries since the bilateral summit in San Francisco last November when, on the sidelines of the APEC summit, the head of state of the Asian giant had the opportunity to discuss de visu with his US counterpart Joe Biden.
The general press around the world gave a lot of attention to Blinken’s visit, underlining its importance in an extremely tense international phase with the two great open war fronts of Ukraine and the Middle East, even if it did not fail to recall the friction factors, still strong, between the parties.
Predictably, many Western observers focused their attention on the warnings that the Secretary of State issued to China in statements made to the US press shortly before leaving, regarding the alleged aid provided to Russia through the sale of goods dual-usethat is, usable by both civil and military industry: goods of which, in reality, there has never been any evidence until now.
To tell the truth, during the summit, Blinken used a much more conciliatory tone than might appear when reading most of the headlines released over the past two days. As reported by Xinhua, the secretary observed that since the meeting in San Francisco, the United States and China have made “good progress in their cooperation in areas such as bilateral interactions, the fight against drug trafficking, artificial intelligence and people-to-people exchanges.”
“The multiplicity and complexity of the challenges the world is facing require the United States and China to work together,” Blinken further argued, adding that Americans of all backgrounds met during his visit all expressed hope that bilateral relations Chinese-Americans improve.
The head of US diplomacy specified that his country «does not seek a new Cold War, does not intend to change the Chinese system, does not seek to oppress China’s development, is not attempting to strengthen its alliances against China and does not have the desire to enter into conflict with China”, reiterating Washington’s adherence to the ‘One China’ policy, which is one of the fundamental principles of bilateral relations and, more broadly, of international law.
Almost fifty-three years after the approval of United Nations Resolution 2758 (1971), which established by a large majority the existence of a single China, legally represented by Beijing, and over forty-five years after the official start of diplomatic relations between the two countries, sanctioned by the entry into force of what was established in the second joint bilateral statement (1979), the issue of Taiwan continues to hold sway in the dialectic between the two shores of the Pacific.
On this basis and on the basis of the third joint communiqué, signed in 1982, Washington should have “gradually reduced” its military supplies to Taipei until a “final resolution”, evidently intended as the elimination of arms sales. Yet this purpose has so far been completely disregarded, even bypassing the agreements with a series of internal acts, implemented by the US Congress, such as the Taiwan Relations Act (1979) and the Six Reassurances (informally in 1982, formally in 2016).
Xi Jinping’s approach during the meeting, in addition to the diplomatic ritual, showed China’s willingness to use the occasion of the forty-fifth anniversary of bilateral relations to overcome the difficulties encountered in recent years.
«China and the United States should be partners rather than rivals, help each other achieve success rather than harm each other, seek common ground and put aside differences rather than engage in aggressive competition, and honor words with the facts rather than saying one thing and doing another”, stated Xi Jinping with an evident reference to the strategic ambiguity that characterizes the White House in its attitude towards China.
According to Xi’s words, the five principles of peaceful coexistence – the cornerstone of Chinese diplomatic doctrine since the time of Zhou Enlai – still remain present in the framework of relations with the United States but it is clear that their full validity is bound to two preconditions fundamental: reciprocity and equal treatment.
If Washington has decided to support Ukraine militarily and financially on the basis of its own strategic and political interests, in the same way Beijing – which has always stated its neutrality since the beginning of hostilities – will not accept conditioning or impositions on its foreign policy line and indeed it will develop its strategic partnership with Russia, based on in-depth cooperation, now more than twenty years old. It is no coincidence that Vladimir Putin is scheduled to visit China in the coming weeks.
In the multipolar phase of globalization – which continues despite everything – the industrial, commercial, financial and logistical dynamics are extremely complex and intertwined. Thinking of being able to reconstitute opposing blocs or alignments, re-proposing logics from the last century, would be completely misleading and extremely dangerous.
Blinken’s visit was preceded – and this is perhaps the most significant fact – by that of the main executives of some of the most important US companies, who arrived in Beijing between the end of March and the beginning of April to meet Xi himself Jinping, Prime Minister Li Qiang, senior officials and various Chinese entrepreneurs. Their names are known to everyone: Apple, Qualcomm, FedEx, Blackwater Group, Bridgewater Associates, Pfizer and others.
Just this morning, however, Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, unexpectedly landed in Beijing, having announced last December the project for the construction in Shanghai of a plant dedicated to the production of Megapack batteries, large energy accumulators made by the giant based in Austin.
In China, to date, thousands of US companies of various sizes are still fully active, not to mention those which, although not operating directly in the Asian country, export or import goods or services of various kinds there. “We live in an interdependent world, and we rise or fall together,” said Xi, who continued: “With their respective interests deeply intertwined, all countries need to build the greatest consensus for outcomes of mutual benefit and common advantage . This is the basic starting point from which China looks at the world and Sino-American relations.”
Andrea Fais – Italian Press Agency
