Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s trip to China gave Beijing the perfect opportunity to stage a propaganda coup while bringing little benefit to the United States, according to analysts.
The two-day trip—marking the first such visit by a U.S. top diplomat in five years—ended on June 19 with Blinken holding talks with Chinese foreign minister Qin Gang, Beijing’s top-ranking diplomat Wang Yi, and for a little more than half an hour, regime leader Xi Jinping.
Washington has cast these meetings in a positive light. Blinken, who has raised issues from Taiwan to human rights to the Chinese spy base in Cuba, has described the conversations as “robust” and “constructive,” and a chance to inject greater stability into an increasingly unstable relationship.
But for longtime China watchers and those who have been advocating for a stronger stance on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the meetings seem far from fruitful.
“Only those who equate dialogue with accomplishment could believe that Blinken’s visit was a success,” June Teufel Dreyer, a political science professor at the University of Miami, told The Epoch Times. “The chief takeaway, if one can call it that, from the meeting was the decision to hold more meetings.”
‘More Symbolic Than Substantial’
China has rejected repeated calls from Blinken to resume bilateral military exchanges, which was one of the key objectives the United States had. Regarding the fentanyl precursor outflow from China, the arbitrary detention of Americans such as Texas businessman Mark Swidan, who is now on death row, and other issues Blinken has flagged, few tangible commitments appeared to have come out of the roughly 11 hours of talks.
“We’re not going to have success on every issue between us on any given day, but in a whole variety of areas—on the terms that we set for this trip—we have made progress and we are moving forward,” Blinken told reporters after meeting with Xi, arguing that resolving issues with China is “a process.”
Several Republican lawmakers and former Trump administration officials don’t see it this way.
“This trip is more symbolic than substantial,” Miles Yu, principal China policy adviser to Blinken’s predecessor, Mike Pompeo, told The Epoch Times.
By Eva Fu
