FPI / September 3, 2024
Geostrategy-Direct
By Richard Fisher
With the rushed “coronation” of Vice President Kamala Harris as the new Democrat Party presidential candidate following Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the race, he is now effectively a Lame Duck president, so it is fair to begin to consider his legacy regarding U.S.-China relations.
For one, the ghost of Henry Kissinger must be smiling, as he would have viewed Biden’s tenure as a broad victory for his stress on engaging the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), even at great cost to the security of the United States, while refusing to initiate policies that would achieve victory over the CCP.
He would have approved of the Aug. 25 Financial Times lengthy “Big Read: US China Relations, The inside story of the secret back channel between the US and China,” detailing how Biden Administration National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi repeatedly “met quietly to stabilize relations.”
Sullivan and Wang met in May 2023 in Vienna, September 2023 in Malta, and in January 2024 in Bangkok.
None of these meetings were actually “secret,” with the U.S. and Chinese side offering public commentary on these meetings and on Aug. 23 it was announced Sullivan will meet Wang Yi again in Beijing from Aug. 27 to 29.
On Aug. 25 Chinese state media Global Times offered a preliminary put down for this visit: “Sullivan will be the first US national security advisor to visit China in eight years, and his trip comes less than three months before the US presidential election.”
Having refused to host a U.S. National Security Advisor during the Trump Administration, China wants the world to see that it is rewarding Sullivan for the Biden Administration’s faith in “dialogue,” which the Trump Administration refused to tolerate as an excuse for China to avoid responsibility for its many destabilizing actions.
Global Times also noted this meeting will help to “implement the consensus reached by two heads of state at the [November 2023 Biden-Xi Jinping] San Francisco summit last year…Following the San Francisco summit, diplomatic, economic, law enforcement, climate change and military teams from both countries have maintained communication, and people-to-people exchanges between the two countries have increased.”
Of course, nothing has really improved, China has not diminished any of its ongoing threat behaviors.
War moves closer on the Taiwan Strait.
On Aug. 23, 38 People’s Liberation Army (PLA) aircraft and 12 PLA navy ships surrounded Taiwan, while on Aug. 25, while China’s Foreign Ministry asserts, according to Global Times, “The Taiwan question is the first and most unbreakable red line in China-US relations, and ‘Taiwan independence’ is the greatest risk to peace and stability in the Taiwan Straits.”
For the CCP, supporting the right of self-determination for the people of Taiwan is now tantamount to supporting “Taiwan Independence,” and could earn a death penalty made in absentia.
China is now the effective leader of nuclear armed coalition of Russia, North Korea and soon, Iran, which are conducting or threatening wars against democracies.
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