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Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the White House claim to be pleased by his trip to Beijing: President Xi Jinping actually met with him and agreed to continue talking.
Thing is, it seems China will only deign to keep talking as long as Washington keeps appeasing it with actual concessions.
Blinken didn’t even get his central ask, restoring military-to-military communication channels that Beijing cut last year but the Bidenites paint as the best way to avoid stumbling into a war.
(Indeed, the Chinese Communists still won’t even meet with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.)
Crucially, Washington had to bribe Beijing to even get this meeting: It has played down Beijing’s intensifying intelligence-gathering (the Cuba spy base, the spy balloon, China’s “secret police” stations inside our country) and is delaying the declassifying of intelligence on COVID’s origins.
It’s also stalling planned restrictions on investment in China linked to its defense industry and on export of US semiconductor tech that could boost Beijing’s military.
