After Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Secretary of State Antony Blinken will be the second senior U.S. official to visit China this year. When Yellen came, she was worried about China's "excess capacity" and pressured us to compromise with the United States in the competition in the new energy industry and help the United States in its increasingly erosive financial situation. With Blinken, who is in charge of diplomacy this time, what topics will China and the United States focus on in their confrontations?
Blinken
According to the press release issued by our Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Blinken's visit was at the invitation of our Foreign Minister Wang Yi, and China's sincerity is on the table, with a total of five points. 1. The two sides should establish a correct understanding, 2. China and the United States should strengthen dialogue, 3. Effectively manage differences, 4. Promote mutually beneficial cooperation, and 5. Jointly shoulder the responsibilities of major countries. In the eyes of some netizens, we have said these words many times in the past few years, and we haven't seen any goodwill from the United States, why do we continue to talk about it, behind this, in fact, there is the biggest difference between the Sino-US competition and the previous global hegemony handover.
In 2012, Graham Allison, a professor at Harvard University in the United States, put forward the theory of "Thucydides Trap", he quoted the ancient Greek historian Thucydides on the analysis of the Peloponnesian War, pointing out that the rise of an emerging power will inevitably challenge the status of the established power, and the established power will inevitably take a series of measures to contain and suppress the former, and the conflict and even war between the two will be inevitable.
This is Blinken's second visit to China in less than a year
In Western political and historiographical circles, the "Thucydides Trap" has long been regarded as a classic, but in fact, there is a huge loophole in this theory, that is, the United States believes that emerging powers will do whatever it takes to seize global hegemony in the same way as established powers. They don't seem to have thought about the fact that two great powers can coexist peacefully without pushing the whole world to the brink of a nuclear war, as was the case with the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union.
Before Blinken's visit to China, our ambassador to the United States, Xie Feng, went to Harvard University and asked Allison himself a soul torture question, saying that since the United States also knows that the "Thucydides Trap" is extremely dangerous, why does it want to jump into it? China has never felt that the so-called "Thucydides Trap" is a historical inevitability.
Chinese Ambassador to the United States Xie Feng
So friends, the current stage of competition between China and the United States seems to be a struggle for "global leadership", but in fact, it is a collision of two different cultural concepts. The United States believes in dualism, wants to fight a new Cold War, and wants to "contain" and "suppress" China, but we want the United States to understand that China-US relations can develop healthily and steadily, that is, the earth is big enough for China and the United States to develop separately and together.
Of course, this process will be very long, and there will be a process of continuous testing and game between the two countries, which may be a few years, a dozen years, or even decades. During this period, Sino-US relations will fluctuate with the development of the international situation. For example, when Blinken comes this time, he will still put pressure on us on issues such as "China's assistance to Russia" and "persuasion of Iran", as well as the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea. What he is about to say is, on the one hand, based on the real need to "contain" China, and on the other hand, in an election year, to show toughness and seek political points for Biden seeking re-election.
The competition between China and the United States is likely to unfold in more areas
Our response, as expected, is that we agreed to manage differences and maintain communication, as Yellen did when she came, but we will not budge an inch on issues related to China's core interests. In the future, with the deepening "anti-China consensus" between the two parties in the United States and the rapid growth of China's strength, dialogue between China and the United States will gradually evolve into a channel for both sides to avoid miscalculations. More games between China and the United States will be played at the level of the Middle East situation, China-EU relations, and China-US trade. As for when that decisive moment will come, let's wait and see.