Opinion

Is China taking a tactical step back in the face of a still powerful US? Perhaps

The widely held pessimism about the prospects for the US secretary of state’s visit to China has turned into a subtle sense of triumph

While Beijing has shown its determination to confront the US presence near its border, the reception of Antony Blinken, Elon Musk and Bill Gates suggests China sees a chance to improve relations and sustain its rise

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Terry Su is president of Lulu Derivation Data Ltd, a Hong Kong-based online publishing house and think tank specialising in geopolitics.

Published: 8:15am, 22 Jun 2023

US-China relations have been so bad, and the chain of recent events that led up to Antony Blinken’s visit to China – the first by a US secretary of state in nearly five years – had put so much attention on it, that his appearance in Beijing on Sunday was nothing short of melodramatic.

The widely held pessimism about the prospects for Blinken’s two-day visit has turned into a subtle sense of triumph. This is in contrast to the efforts of both sides to tamp down expectations of the potential significance of the visit before it started.

At a media briefing on June 14, Daniel Kritenbrink, US assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, who had made a trip to Beijing to prepare for Blinken’s visit, said his boss was going to Beijing to keep communication channels open, to stand up for American values and interests and to cooperate where the two sides can, in areas such as “climate and global macroeconomic stability”. That sounded more like posturing than foretelling anything substantive.