Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the White House claim to be pleased by his trip to Beijing: President Xi Jinping actually met with him and agreed to continue talking.
Thing is, it seems China will only deign to keep talking as long as Washington keeps appeasing it with actual concessions.
Blinken didn’t even get his central ask, restoring military-to-military communication channels that Beijing cut last year but the Bidenites paint as the best way to avoid stumbling into a war.
(Indeed, the Chinese Communists still won’t even meet with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.)
Crucially, Washington had to bribe Beijing to even get this meeting: It has played down Beijing’s intensifying intelligence-gathering (the Cuba spy base, the spy balloon, China’s “secret police” stations inside our country) and is delaying the declassifying of intelligence on COVID’s origins.
It’s also stalling planned restrictions on investment in China linked to its defense industry and on export of US semiconductor tech that could boost Beijing’s military.
Does the White House need to continue holding off on all this to keep the talks going?
Remember, Blinken was set to go to Beijing in February before the spy-balloon incident (which the administration tried to keep from the US public!) forced him to cancel.
Why did Washington need to do anything to grease the skids to get the trip back on?
Worse, during the visit, Blinken gave Beijing a free pass on the balloon, too: “That chapter should be closed,” he said.
Huh? President Joe Biden himself said the balloon was “carrying two freight cars’ worth of spying equipment.”
Suddenly, it doesn’t matter, just because Blinken told the Chinese we didn’t like it?
The SecState also handed China a subtle gift in his statement on Taiwan, insisting, “We do not support Taiwan’s independence.”
Even amid tougher talk and a plea to preserve the “status quo,” that’s a perilous concession.
There’s also the mystery that Xi announced “the two sides” had “reached agreement on some specific issues” before telling Blinken he hopes “you will make more positive contributions to stabilizing China-US relations.”
“More positive contributions”?
Washington’s mum on any specific agreements.
What did Blinken promise?
Notably, the main statement out of China’s Foreign Ministry blamed Washington for relations hitting a “low point” and demanded the United States “lift illegal unilateral sanctions against China, abandon suppression of China’s technological development” and more.
It’s obvious what’s really going on here: Team Biden is so desperate to keep talking that it’s afraid to “offend” Beijing by standing up to it and may even be making secret concessions.
On flashpoints from the spy balloon to the coronavirus’ origins, our leaders are more anxious to keep the American public in the dark than to hold Beijing to account.
It’s appeasement, and it’s wrong.
The question is: How much will they give away just so they can enjoy more “diplomacy”?
This story originally appeared on NYPost
