Receive free updates on U.S.-China relations
we will send you myFT Daily Digest Email summary of the latest information U.S.-China Relations Every morning there is news.
China’s powerful spy agency has attacked recent U.S. diplomatic posturing as a mixture of engagement and containment, and suggested that a possible meeting between the two leaders in November would be in jeopardy if Washington did not show more “sincerity”.
The rare warning from the Department of State Security comes less than a week after a visit to Beijing by U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, who praised her meetings with Chinese officials but said U.S. businesses view China as increasingly “unsuitable for investment” .
“Recently, a number of US officials have visited China one after another, saying that the Biden administration has no intention to contain China’s development, nor does it seek to decouple from China,” China’s Ministry of State Security said in a statement on its official WeChat social media account.
The foreign ministry said the U.S. rapprochement strategy with China was “old wine in new bottles”, noting Washington’s approval of arms sales and military funding to Taiwan, which Beijing claims.
“China will never let down its vigilance because of a few ‘sweet words’ from the US,” the statement said.
China’s Ministry of State Security accused the United States of continuing to “make trouble” in the South China Sea and Tibet. Washington says it will punish Chinese officials responsible for the forcible assimilation of 1 million Tibetan children into government boarding schools.
In addition, the U.S. has “openly bad-mouthed China’s economy,” the Ministry of Homeland Security said.
Last month, U.S. President Joe Biden described China as a “ticking time bomb,” saying the country was struggling with slowing economic growth.
Chinese President Xi Jinping and Joe Biden are expected to meet at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum in San Francisco in November, and the Ministry of State Security appeared to issue a veiled warning. It will be their first meeting since speaking at the G20 summit in Bali, Indonesia, last year.
“To truly achieve ‘From Bali to San Francisco’,” the United States needs to show enough sincerity,” the Department of Homeland Security said.
A combination of “engagement and containment” has been typical in Washington since the resumption of diplomatic relations between the United States and China in 1979, the report added.
The remarks by China’s Ministry of State Security were Beijing’s strongest rebuttal to recent statements by the United States, which has been seeking to re-establish dialogue and improve bilateral relations.
Raimondo’s visit follows those of Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen in recent months. The U.S. commerce secretary said she found her Chinese counterparts receptive and had established many communication channels to address business and intellectual property issues and discuss export controls.
But she also demanded that Beijing take action on what she said were obstacles to American companies doing business in China, including random fines, police raids on offices and new espionage and data laws.
Both the Biden and Trump administrations have relentlessly escalated economic decoupling, supply chain disruption and containment of China, but the strategy is “doomed to fail,” MSS said.
This, the report says, is because “the dynamics of historical development” are not on “the side of the United States.” “The great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation has entered an irreversible historical process.”
It followed China’s confirmation on Monday that Xi would not attend this weekend’s Group of 20 leaders’ summit in New Delhi, his first absence from such a meeting since he took power in 2013.
Svlook
