A recent call between US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and top diplomat Yang Jiechi has helped to answer a burning question in US foreign policy circles: Will President Biden’s China policy come to resemble Trump’s scorched earth approach, or will it opt for the path of least resistance and revert to the previous dogma of ‘peaceful evolution.’
The phone call, along with recent hawkish rhetoric from Washington, suggest that this is one area where we’ll see some policy continuity between the two administrations.
Background
The phone call seems to have heralded the return of human rights issues to top-level relations, and in a big way. Blinken is said to have warned that Washington would protect democracy and ‘hold Beijing to account’ for its various transgressions, specifically provocations in the Taiwan Strait, tightening repression in Hong Kong, and mass incarceration of ethnic minorities in Xinjiang.
For his part, Yang stressed that each country should follow its own development path and cautioned the US against interfering in China’s internal issues: “No one can stop the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.”
Yang had previously sent conciliatory signals in a virtual speech earlier in the week, where he said that bilateral relations were at a ‘key moment’ and called on President Biden to drop the ‘misguided policies’ of his predecessor.
Analysis
This was not your typical feeling-out between two top diplomats interacting for the first time, when the tendency is to focus on pleasantries and positives in the bilateral relationship. Rather, Blinken came out swinging, and not on the trade issues that dominated US-China relations under Trump – this time the US diplomatic line contained a distinctive ideological aspect.
That democracy and human rights are back on the table in US-China relations is a noteworthy development. It’s not only President Trump who was eager to split the economic from the political in dealing with China. The Obama administration was also often criticized for being too timid by rights activists, continuing the general drift away from political concerns which followed China’s post-Tiananmen diplomatic rehabilitation, a drift that coincided with the country’s ascendance as the world’s second-largest economy.
Why have human rights suddenly returned to the bilateral dialogue? Why now?
Part of it has to do with genuine strategic concern on the part of the US authorities. The ‘peaceful evolution’ paradigm, that China would eventually adopt a democratic system as a matter of destiny, is now relegated to the dustbin of failed foreign policies. Contrary to expectations, the country has become more authoritarian over time, particularly under the Xi Jinping administration, and for the most part the population seems more than content with their governance model, especially when its refracted through the lens of CCP total information control.
This all amounts to something that the United States has not seen for decades: a credible competitor in the ideological realm. China now represents an alternative to the Western model, and one that is far more economically appealing than the Soviet system ever was. And similar to the Cold War era, this ideological competition naturally lends itself to zero-sum strategic calculations.
