© Provided by Washington Examiner Secretary of State Antony Blinken will host a delegation of senior Chinese officials in Alaska for an airing of "concerns" in the first high-level diplomatic encounter of officials managing the now-acrimonious relations between Washington and Beijing.
"This is an important opportunity for us to lay out, in very frank terms, many concerns that we have with Beijing's actions and behavior that are challenging the security, prosperity, the values of the United States, and our partners and allies," Blinken told the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday. "This is an opportunity to put on the table concerns [that we have] and to hear theirs."
American and Chinese officials have learned to regard each other as rivals for global power and influence, a dynamic long suspected by U.S. intelligence agencies and now accepted as a geopolitical fact. Those tensions have worsened during the coronavirus pandemic, while China's genocide against the Uyghurs has added what Blinken has termed an "industrial scale" human rights crisis to the dispute.
"This is not a strategic dialogue," Blinken testified. "There is no intent at this point for a series of follow-on engagement. Those engagements, if they are to follow, really have to be based on the proposition that we're seeing tangible problems and tangible outcomes on the issues of concern to us."
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The meeting is timed to occur against a backdrop of U.S. solidarity with allies in Northeast Asia, following headway in negotiations with Japan and South Korea over how to share the costs of U.S. military deployments in those countries. Those partnerships irritate Beijing, which sees them as a potential impediment to the mainland communist regime's bid to gain control over Taiwan, a strategically crucial island that sheltered the remnants of the government overthrown in the 1949 Chinese communist revolution and developed a now-thriving democracy.
"The U.S. is adopting wolf pack tactics," Chinese state media complained this week. "China now is making full preparations, strengthening its preparation for military struggle and training troops in order to target Taiwan secessionist forces that might someday take the 'independence path.' ... No matter who gets involved, it will not stop China's determination."
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The State Department chief, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan, and their Chinese communist counterparts will converge on Alaska as Blinken returns from a trip to Japan and South Korea.
The meeting comes in the wake of last summer's encounter between then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Chinese officials in Hawaii. "Overall, given all the current circumstances with the relationship, the PRC side could not be described as really forthcoming in this," David Stilwell, the State Department's lead official for East Asia, said at the time.
Tags: News, Foreign Policy, National Security, Antony Blinken, China, Jake Sullivan, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea
Original Author: Joel Gehrke
Original Location: 'Wolf pack tactics': Blinken to host Chinese officials in airing of grievances