Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the U.S. will seek to influence China’s behavior by shaping the world around Beijing in remarks that took direct aim at President Xi Jinping’s performance leading the world’s second-biggest economy.
“This is a charged moment for the world,” Blinken said Thursday in a speech laying out the Biden administration’s approach toward China. “We cannot rely on Beijing to change its trajectory. So we will shape the strategic environment around Beijing to advance our vision for an open, inclusive international system.”
Blinken warned that China is seeking to dominate the industries of the future and said the U.S. response will be to bolster investment at home; work closely with allies, particularly in the Indo-Pacific; and compete with China on a “level playing field.” He said Xi’s government is actively undercutting the international system that aided China’s rise, while adding that the U.S. doesn’t seek a new Cold War with Beijing.
“Rather than using its power to reinforce and revitalize the laws, agreements, principles and institutions that enabled its success, so that other countries can benefit from them too, Beijing is undermining it,” Blinken said. “Under President Xi, the ruling Chinese Communist Party has become more repressive at home and more aggressive abroad.”
The top U.S. diplomat’s comments were unusually direct, and his public comments mirror the administration’s classified China strategy, according to people familiar with the issue.
He praised the U.S. for having the world’s “most powerful military” and lauded American-created Covid-19 vaccines that have been shown to be more effective than those made in China. He emphasized that the U.S. is providing millions of vaccines to other nations without political strings attached.
The Chinese Embassy in Washington didn’t immediately respond to an emailed request for comment on the speech.
Blinken’s remarks weren’t intended to introduce new policies but rather to clarify U.S. goals in its relations with China and signal that Washington has a clear strategy to advance its interests, said Bonnie Glaser, director of the Asia program at the German Marshall Fund of the U.S.
“The key message is that the U.S. can’t change China but can seek to shape the strategic environment around China and by doing so sharpen China’s choices,” she said.
Blinken said the U.S. doesn’t want to “sever” China from the global economy, but warned that “Beijing, despite its rhetoric, is pursuing asymmetric decoupling, seeking to make China less dependent on the world and the world more dependent on China.” And he said that businesses shouldn’t sacrifice Western values in seeking access to China’s markets.
Mentioning areas of potential cooperation, Blinken cited climate change, food security, addressing Iranian and North Korean nuclear programs and “global macro coordination” as the world’s economy recovers from the worst of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“In short we will engage constructively with China wherever we can, not as a favor to us or anyone else, and never in exchange from walking away from our principles, but because working together to solve great challenges is what the world expects from great powers, and because it’s directly in our interest,” he said.
Those passages about cooperation aren’t likely to be seen as the takeaway message in Beijing. The unusually frank rhetoric against Xi’s government comes after tensions between the nations soured further over what the U.S. sees as China’s tacit support for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine and comments by President Joe Biden suggesting the U.S. would take military action to defend Taiwan in case of invasion.
Blinken said U.S. policy toward Taiwan hasn’t changed — “we do not support Taiwan independence” — but added that America has a “strong unofficial relationship” with Taipei. In a statement, Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry thanked Blinken for reiterating its security commitment to the democratically ruled island and noted the U.S. briefed Taiwan on the contents of the speech in advance.
Blinken said that the continuing war in Ukraine won’t distract the Biden administration from what it sees as America’s biggest challenge in the years ahead.
“Even as President Putin’s war continues, we will remain focused on the most serious long-term challenge to the international order – and that is the one posed by the People’s Republic of China,” Blinken said.
Despite signaling for months that the administration’s China strategy was almost ready for public airing, key unresolved issues remain, including the fate of $300 billion in tariffs that Biden inherited from the Trump administration. A top U.S. trade official said Wednesday that the administration’s review of those tariffs is likely to take months.
“The missing piece was a bold trade initiative,” said Richard Fontaine, head of the Center for a New American Security. But there’s little appetite in Washington these days to take on a new free trade agreement.
Thursday’s speech came after months of delays and internal deliberations, as well as Blinken’s COVID-19 diagnosis earlier this month. As a result, it followed instead of preceded Biden’s travel to Asia last week, where he unveiled a new 13-nation Indo-Pacific Economic Framework designed to counter China’s influence. The U.S. didn’t invite China to join the economic framework and hasn’t revealed the criteria for other nations to join.
