- US failure to show mutual respect and keep its promises on issues like Taiwan is worsening ties with Beijing, veteran diplomat says
- US government and media playing up ‘China threat’ to fend off perceived threat to hegemony, adds the ambassador to Washington from 2013 to 2021
“Shocking and perilous” incidents could happen between China and the United States in the next couple of years, a former Chinese ambassador to Washington has warned. Cui Tiankai, who served as envoy to the US from 2013 to 2021, said he had observed a significant deterioration in opinions about China among the American public during his term. The negative changes in Washington’s China policy would continue for several more years, he forecast.
“We would see no essential change in the US administration’s China policy regardless of the result of the 2024 presidential election,” Cui said as he attended a government-backed conference on diplomacy in Shanghai.
“There will be much turbulence in the China-US relationship. There may even be some shocking and perilous events taking place.” Cui’s comments, on the sidelines of the Lanting Forum on Chinese Modernisation and the World, came as US-China tensions worsen over issues ranging from trade and hi-tech rivalry to the Taiwan Strait.
President Xi Jinping sent a message to the forum highlighting China’s path to modernisation.
“To realise modernisation, a country must not only follow the general rules of modernisation, but also conform to its own reality and have its own characteristics,” he wrote. “China is willing to work with other countries to provide new opportunities for world development with new achievements in Chinese-style modernisation.” On recent US complaints about China freezing high-level bilateral contacts and rejecting a rescheduled visit by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Cui said such exchanges were necessary but Washington was to blame for their suspension.
Blinken’s visit to China in February was postponed after the US military shot down what Washington said was a Chinese spy balloon. Beijing insists it was a weather balloon which was blown off course.
Months earlier, Beijing halted high-level cooperation with Washington on several issues, including military talks and the climate, after then House speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taipei in defiance of repeated Chinese warnings.
“There are two factors worth noting: mutual respect and keeping one’s word,” Cui said, adding communication was affected precisely because those two things were violated. He said the US side loves to say they will deal with China “from a position of strength”, which means they behave in a coercive manner. Also, the US administration had not honoured promises made when meeting with the Chinese side, such as on the Taiwan issue.
Months earlier, Beijing halted high-level cooperation with Washington on several issues, including military talks and the climate, after then House speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taipei in defiance of repeated Chinese warnings.
“There are two factors worth noting: mutual respect and keeping one’s word,” Cui said, adding communication was affected precisely because those two things were violated. He said the US side loves to say they will deal with China “from a position of strength”, which means they behave in a coercive manner. Also, the US administration had not honoured promises made when meeting with the Chinese side, such as on the Taiwan issue.
“What’s the point of meeting if what is said in the meeting has no credibility?” he said. Recalling US President Joe Biden’s pledges such as not seeking “a new cold war” or to oppose China by strengthening alliances, and not supporting “Taiwan independence”, Cui said the US had then turned around and broken all those promises. “I believe that only by addressing the above two points will China and the United States be able to conduct high-level exchanges effectively and smoothly.”
Dismissing the Western accusation that Beijing was “unilaterally changing the status quo” in the Taiwan Strait, Cui argued that Taipei’s rejection of the “one-China” consensus was the worst change to the status quo, and the US was also changing the status quo by selling more weapons to the island and upgrading official exchanges with it. “If the US really opposes unilateral changes to the status quo, can they make a promise themselves first that they will not do anything to change the status quo?” he said.
The US recently increased its military presence in the Philippines, including setting up two new bases close to Taiwan. This has triggered Chinese concerns that US allies such as Japan, South Korea and the Philippines would get drawn into any dispute over Taiwan, which Beijing regards as breakaway territory to be reunited by force if necessary. While most countries, including the US, do not recognise self-ruled Taiwan as a sovereign state, they are opposed to any forcible change in the status quo. The US is also committed to defending the island under its Taiwan Relations Act.
Manila announced last week that it would not allow the US and its military forces to use its soil to stockpile weapons that could be used to defend Taiwan. Cui said the US government and media had been misleading the public into believing in the “China threat”, for fear of Beijing challenging its global hegemony, which was never its intention. “The US now stands up against whatever China does internationally, without any sense of right or wrong, and without regard to the facts. “The US is now playing its version of the ‘Two Whatevers’ – whatever China does, they must oppose; whatever China advocates, they must disapprove of,” Cui said, referring to a short-lived Communist Party policy after the Mao era.
The ongoing economic and technological “decoupling” was also being pushed by such misconceptions borne out of geopolitical and geostrategic calculations, Cui said, adding this was against the laws of economics, science and technological development. It was also against the interests of both China and the US themselves, he warned. “The United States is sparing no effort to push forward decoupling. They may succeed for a certain period of time and to a certain extent, but I am afraid that in the long run they may not be able to get what they want.”
Liu Zhen