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US relations with China have been characterized by strategic ambiguity. On the one hand, after five years, the Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, traveled to China in an attempt to ease the difficult relations between the two powers. But a day later, President Joe Biden called his Chinese counterpart a “dictator.” Will bilateral diplomacy be reestablished or will Biden’s words mark a new episode of tension? We discuss it in this discussion.
The United States and China are trying to unfreeze their diplomatic relations, and at the same time, President Joe Biden calls his counterpart Xi Jinping a “dictator”. For one thing, White House Secretary of State Antony Blinken was the first official of his rank to visit China in the last five years.
On his trip from June 18 to 19, Blinken met with the Chinese president in order to maintain the line of communication to manage diplomacy, in an attempt to lower tensions caused by the alleged spy balloons that flew over North America; the differences that Beijing and Washington have regarding Taiwan and the Western fear that the communist government will sell arms to Russia in the middle of the war in Ukraine.
Although Blinken was optimistic about the outcome of his official trip, a day later, Biden referred to Xi Jinping and compared him to dictators. For its part, the Chinese Foreign Ministry responded by calling Biden’s comment a “political provocation.”
Are US-China relations frozen again? What is the background to Biden’s words and Beijing’s reaction? In this edition of El Debate we address it with our guests:
– Raquel Isamara, PhD in Asia and China studies, and director of the Chinese Policy Observatory.
– Lorenzo Maggiorelli, professor of international relations at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana. His research focuses on relations between East Asia and Latin America, and he is a specialist in the Taiwan situation.
– Jorge Heine, professor of international relations at Boston University and former Chilean ambassador to China.
