Tag: Biden, Joseph R Jr

Burns Calls for a Mix of Competition and Cooperation with China

Chin@Strategy

R. Nicholas Burns, President Biden’s nominee to be U.S. ambassador to China, told a Senate panel on Wednesday that if he was confirmed he would help Mr. Biden pursue a strategy of competition and cooperation with a rising Beijing, which he called “the biggest geopolitical test of the 21st century.” A lifelong diplomat who has held senior foreign policy posts in Democratic and Republican administrations, Mr. Burns was appearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which is considering his nomination. He was searing about China’s recent international role, saying that…

Washington Hears Echoes of the ’50s and Worries: Is This a Cold War With China?

Chin@Strategy

The White House is loath to put a label on this multilayered approach, which may explain why Mr. Biden has yet to give a speech laying it out in any detail. But his actions so far look increasingly like those in a world of competitive coexistence, a bit edgier than the “peaceful coexistence” that the Soviet leader Nikita S. Khrushchev used to characterize the old Cold War. (Interestingly, after meeting this month in Switzerland with Jake Sullivan, the president’s national security adviser, China’s top diplomat said he objected to any…

U.S. and China Enter Dangerous Territory Over Taiwan

Chin@Strategy

At one particularly tense moment, in October 2020, American intelligence reports detailed how Chinese leaders had become worried that President Trump was preparing an attack. Those concerns, which could have been misread, prompted Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to call his counterpart in Beijing to assure otherwise. “The Taiwan issue has ceased to be a sort of narrow, boutique issue, and it’s become a central theater — if not the central drama — in U.S.-China strategic competition,” said Evan Medeiros, who served on…

Biden Signs Bill to Compensate ‘Havana Syndrome’ Victims

Chin@Strategy

President Biden signed into law on Friday a new government program to compensate C.I.A. officers, State Department diplomats and other federal officials who have suffered traumatic neurological injuries that the intelligence community has yet to figure out, launched by assailants it cannot yet identify. With no ceremony and little public comment, Mr. Biden signed the Havana Act, authorizing Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and the C.I.A. director, William J. Burns, to give financial support to employees who have suffered brain injuries. The act is named for what has become…

Biden and Xi Jinping of China Agree to Hold a Virtual Summit

Chin@Strategy

President Biden will meet President Xi Jinping of China for their first summit by the end of this year — but virtually, not in person, a concession to a pandemic era and a recognition of the dangers of going an entire year into a new presidential term without a formal meeting between the leaders of the world’s largest and second-largest economies. The announcement on Wednesday from American officials came after a six-hour meeting between Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, and his closest Chinese counterpart, Yang Jiechi, Beijing’s top diplomat.…

U.S. Signals No Thaw in Trade Relations With China

Chin@Strategy

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration offered its strongest signal yet that the United States’ combative economic approach toward China would continue, with senior administration officials saying that President Biden would not immediately lift tariffs on Chinese goods and that he would hold Beijing accountable for trade commitments agreed to during the Trump administration. Comments on Monday by Katherine Tai, the United States trade representative, and other officials provided one of the first looks at how the Biden administration plans to deal with a rising economic and security threat from China.…

What AUKUS Means for U.S.-China Great Power Competition

Chin@Strategy

This is a hallmark of great power competition: Competitive initiatives like AUKUS provide visible ways to counter or balance or complicate China’s military activities but don’t necessarily help allies meet defined objectives. More often, competition becomes an end in itself — an open-ended imperative that assumes everything an opponent dislikes must be good policy. Another common feature of competitive policies is that officials tend to overlook their costs. For one thing, AUKUS carries significant diplomatic costs at a time when the United States is in desperate need of credibility with…

American Siblings Barred From Leaving China for 3 Years Return to U.S.

Chin@Strategy

American officials told Chinese officials repeatedly that exit bans of U.S. citizens were a major concern. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken pressed senior Chinese officials about exit bans during talks in Anchorage in March, and raised cases of Americans trapped in exit bans during a phone call with China’s top foreign policy official, Yang Jiechi, in June. When the deputy secretary of state, Wendy R. Sherman, visited China for talks in July, she “raised the cases of American and Canadian citizens” detained in China or held under exit bans,…

To Get Back Meng Wanzhou, China Uses a Hardball Tactic: Seizing Foreigners

Chin@Strategy

In a rapid-fire climax to a 1,030-day standoff, China prepared to welcome home a company executive whose arrest in Canada and possible extradition to the United States made her a focus of superpower friction. In getting her back, Beijing brandished a formidable political tool: using detained foreign citizens as bargaining chips in disputes with other countries. The executive, Meng Wanzhou, was set to land in China on Saturday night local time to a public that widely sees her as a victim of arrogant American overreach. By the same turn, Michael…

U.S. Reaches Agreement to Release Huawei’s Meng Wanzhou

Chin@Strategy

For its part, the Chinese government has underwritten the cost of installing Huawei gear, in an effort to dominate networks from Latin America to the Middle East. Ms. Meng came to personify that effort. Her determination to wire up Tehran, at a time in which the West was seeking to contain Iran’s nuclear program, attracted protests among American officials. For that reason, some China hard-liners objected on Friday to news that the charges were being dropped. “It sends the wrong message to Chinese business executives around the world that it’s…