The U.S. State Department issued an announcement saying that U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Conda visited China from April 14 to 16. The U.S. State Department said the purpose of Kangda's trip was to communicate with Chinese officials and ensure that both sides were committed to maintaining effective channels of communication between the two sides and responsibly managing issues of competition between China and the United States.
It is worth mentioning that this time Kangda was accompanied by Sarah, senior director of the White House Security Council's "China and Taiwan Affairs".
The US media "New York Times" said that Yellen did not achieve substantive results after concluding her six-day visit to China. Yellen's visit, in addition to confirming that the two sides will continue to maintain communication and exchanges, has not yielded results on a series of issues such as Sino-US trade and US debt, so the New York Times believes that Yellen's visit to China is better than nothing except to ease relations between the two countries.
Conda
Under these circumstances, after a lapse of five days, the US State Department and the White House will once again send lower-level officials to visit China, which is bound to be difficult to achieve any results, after all, the framework has not been decided, let alone specific affairs. So what are the considerations behind Yellen's departure from China for only five days, when the United States sent senior government officials to visit China again?
There may be two concerns about this, one is to pave the way for Blinken's visit to China, and the other is the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait issues.
On June 18 last year, Blinken went to China for a visit in a hurry. But there is one detail that has not been widely noticed by the outside world, that is, Kangda and Sara also came to China at the same time before Blinken's visit to China, just like this time.
After Yellen's visit to China was confirmed, the White House also said that Blinken would visit China in the coming weeks to deal with a series of issues faced by China and the United States.
Yellen
Of course, in the end, Biden didn't come, Blinken was coming. Kangda and Sara visited first, playing a role in paving the way. At present, although the White House has announced that Blinken will visit China, we have not confirmed this trip.
In a sense, Blinken's visit to China will be more complicated if Yellen's visit to China fails to achieve any substantive results, because Blinken's identity determines that his visit involves a deeper strategic game between China and the United States, which is more different and more difficult to reach consensus than Yellen's several issues. Therefore, Kant was sent to China first to make a front stop and explore the wind.
The second issue is the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait. On the Taiwan Strait issue, Ma Ying-jeou, former chairman of the Kuomintang and former leader of the Taiwan region, visited the mainland and emphasized that the two sides of the strait have the same ancestry and the same origin, and stressed the "consensus of '92," while the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) on the other side of the strait has secretly stumbling and continues to negate the "consensus of '92."
At the same time, Lai Ching-te has also introduced an appointment of a person with a very "Taiwan independence" color, basically replacing all responsible persons and officials on the island with "Taiwan independence" elements, and this will inevitably lead to extreme tension in cross-strait relations when Lai Ching-te is about to take the oath of office in May 520.
The Taiwan question
And on the South China Sea issue, the United States, Japan, and the Philippines are even more ready to move. On April 10, the United States received Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida as a state guest, and Biden held a two-hour meeting with Fumio Kishida at the White House.
The next day, the summit of the United States, Japan and the Philippines was held in Washington to discuss strengthening trilateral defense cooperation in order to achieve the so-called "security and prosperity" of the Indo-Taiwan region. In the trilateral joint statement after the meeting, China was mentioned several times, saying that China is trying to unilaterally change the status quo in the Taiwan Strait in the South China Sea, causing further escalation of the situation in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea.
With regard to this meeting, the US media generally believe that this move is actually the US hope to launch a more extensive "diplomatic offensive" in the Asia-Pacific region in order to achieve the goal of gaining an advantage in competition with China.
U.S.-China relations
The visit to China by the White House officials in charge of Pacific and Taiwan affairs is obviously aimed at China. On the Taiwan Strait issue, the United States is not ready for a direct conflict with China at this stage, so this move by the United States can be understood as a special attempt to ease the situation in the Taiwan Strait, after all, if a conflict breaks out in the Taiwan Strait, the United States will fall into a dilemma of "intervening" or "not intervening."
The same is true on the South China Sea issue, where Biden, Blinken, Sullivan and other senior US government officials have all taken a strong stance on the South China Sea issue, saying that China has underestimated the possibility of conflict and confrontation between China and the United States in the South China Sea, and has also particularly emphasized that "the United States and the Philippines are not only allies but also a family" and instigated the Philippines to provoke us in the South China Sea. Therefore, at a time of tension in the South China Sea, the United States needs to communicate with China to avoid a large-scale military conflict in the South China Sea. After all, the United States wants to create chaos in the South China Sea and provide a starting point for its own intervention, rather than really trying to trap itself in it.