A woman adjusts a Chinese flag close to flags of the USA.
Ng Han Guan | AFP | Getty Images
The meeting between American and Chinese officials this week in Alaska is unlikely to produce major advances, former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said on Wednesday on CNBC’s “Street Signs Asia” program.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan will hold high-level personal talks on Thursday with Chinese Yang Jiechi, a member of the Communist Party’s top decision-making body, and Wang Yi, the Minister of Foreign Affairs. It will be the first high-level meeting of the Biden government with Chinese officials.
“It is more likely to be a dialogue about dialogue than substantive problem solving,” said Rudd, who is now president and CEO of the Asia Society.
Blinken, who is visiting Japan and South Korea – Washington’s two largest military allies in Asia – before Thursday’s meeting, fired on Beijing over Hong Kong, Taiwan, Xinjiang, the South China Sea and Tibet .
These issues are likely to be major topics of conversation when the two groups meet in Alaska, according to experts.
Redefining the US-China relationship
The US-China relationship has eroded in the past four years, when the Trump administration blamed Beijing for a wide range of complaints, including: intellectual property theft, unfair commercial practices, as well as the coronavirus pandemic, which was first reported in the China.
The two countries are looking for a new strategic narrative to govern their bilateral relationship, which structurally has become “more problematic” due to the shift in the balance of power between Washington and Beijing, according to Rudd. He explained that China’s growing influence has made the two superpowers fierce rivals in the areas of trade, investment, technology, capital markets, influence and also ideology.
“It’s competitive, whether we like it or not,” said Rudd. “However, at the same time, there are areas in each country that justify cooperation, such as climate change, pandemics and, frankly, global debt management.”
In the future, the two countries will be able to identify these avenues of cooperation, while taking note of the other party’s areas of competition and red lines, said the former prime minister. This could prevent the competitive relationship from becoming an open conflict.
Asia is a priority
President Joe Biden said that his approach to China would be different from his predecessor, Donald Trump, and that his government would work closely with the allies to react against Beijing. Last Friday, Biden virtually met with leaders from India, Japan and Australia as part of an informal strategic alliance known as Quad.
The United States started well in terms of repairing some of these alliances in Asia, according to Victor Cha, senior consultant and president of Korea for the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
“Frankly, for the Japan and South Korea allies, the United States has been speaking a language for the past four years that they don’t really understand,” Cha told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” on Wednesday.
“All of these alliance relationships during those four years have been reduced to how much money the allies are willing to pay for US security and that’s it. Other than that, these allies were seen as economic enemies and as passive in terms of US power. They were not traditionally seen as they are – as assets of US power, “he said.
Rudd explained that the thinking in Beijing is that the United States will take a long time to rebuild alliances after effectively moving away from them under the previous government. But if the Biden government “manages to consolidate America’s position again in the region and with other allies, then the Chinese may have a more formidable challenge than they now necessarily assume.”