Meeting with Xi: Blinken’s China trip a success?
After meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang and Beijing’s chief diplomat Wang Yi, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken also had direct talks with President Xi Jinping on Monday. Europe’s press sees this as an important sign, even if the discussions seem to have produced few concrete results.
Coexistence instead of global disorder
The US will have to make a big effort, political scientist Charles A. Kupchan advises in La Repubblica:
“Americans will have to make a leap in their political imagination to coexist with a major power whose political system poses a threat to them and is at odds with their messianic commitment to spreading democracy. The alternative would be an unbridgeable geopolitical divide and a deepening of global disorder. The two countries could, for example, normalise their military contacts and separate discussions about transnational issues such as climate change, global health and trade from those on thornier issues such as Taiwan and human rights.”
Drive a wedge between Beijing and Moscow
The time has come to rethink basic foreign policy concepts, says Večernji list:
“With the biggest war since World War II raging in Europe and posing a serious challenge to the US’s political will and resources, Washington must first and foremost ask itself whether it is in its own interest to continue a policy that is driving Xi’s China ever more firmly into Putin’s embrace. ... While anti-Chinese hardliners in Washington have been calling for a decoupling of the US and China for months, perhaps it is time for a decoupling of Beijing and Moscow.”
Reduce tensions resulting from intense competition
France Inter stresses the importance of a détente between the two states:
“A single visit will not defuse the tensions. The rift between Beijing and Washington has become too great to be overcome by a few hours of talks. ... The situation was summed up well by Kurt Campbell, US Coordinator for Indo-Pacific Affairs. ‘Intense competition requires intense diplomacy if we are to deal with tensions,’ he said on the eve of the visit. In plain English: Americans and Chinese must learn to disagree without running the risk of starting World War III at every moment.”
Avoid misunderstandings
The Daily Telegraph also sees Blinken’s visit to China primarily as a way of defusing potential conflicts:
“The talks may not advance much, but they could halt the downward spiral in the relationship. Mr Blinken said one objective was to establish mechanisms of crisis management to reduce the risk of a dangerous miscalculation on both sides as well as to explore potential for co-operation. Some will criticise the absence of any strictures over China’s human rights record; but, as Churchill put it, meeting jaw to jaw is better than war.”
