I see the monologues happening in your neighbourhood are looking promising
the world gets to view America telling Team China the usual, and listen to Team China telling Team America to go pound sand
am wondering what the two sides are supposed to negotiate about
:0)
bloomberg.com
U.S.-China Tensions Exposed Quickly at Start of Alaska Talks
Nick Wadhams
19 March 2021, 01:00 GMT+8
The first face-to-face talks between senior U.S. and Chinese officials since President Joe Biden took office got off to a rough start on Thursday, with each side sharply criticizing the other over a range of contentious issues.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken began his remarks at the meeting in Anchorage, Alaska, by vowing to raise concerns about recent cyber attacks, the treatment of Muslim minorities in Xinjiang and Beijing’s increasing control over Hong Kong. He said China’s actions threatened the international order and human rights.
“The alternative to a rules-based order is a world in which might makes right and winner takes all and that would be a far more violent and unstable world,” Blinken said.
Chinese officials shot back in kind, with State Councilor Yang Jiechi offering a lengthy monologue in which he said Western nations don’t represent global public opinion and called the U.S. the “champion” of cyber-attacks.
“Many people within the United States actually have little confidence in the democracy of the United States,” he said, citing the killing of Black Americans and the Black Lives Matter movement. Near the end of his opening remarks, he said Blinken’s comments weren’t “normal” and added that in response “mine aren’t either.”
The combativeness signaled just how difficult the talks will be. The two sides scheduled a series of three negotiating sessions on Thursday and Friday, but the U.S. sought to set low expectations for a breakthrough.
Coming into the meeting, it was increasingly clear that despite Biden’s criticism of former President Donald Trump, he’s unlikely to make major changes to his predecessor’s hard-line approach to China. On human rights in Xinjiang , on Hong Kong’s and even on tariffs, Trump-era policies remain in place.
“At least initially, they’re sticking with what Trump left them,” said Aaron Frieberg, a professor of foreign policy at Princeton University and a national security aide under President George W. Bush. “On concrete things like saying China is committing genocide in Xinjiang -- that was a land mine left for them on the way out the door -- instead of trying to work around it, they just embraced it.”
Earlier: U.S. Cautions China Meeting Unlikely to Yield Breakthrough
China is the most prominent example of Biden’s continuity with Trump so far, but there are others: On Saudi Arabia, Biden held back from sanctioning Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman even as he went beyond Trump by publicly implicating him in the death of columnist Jamal Khashoggi. Biden is taking up Trump’s push to reinvigorate the Quad alliance of the U.S., Australia, Japan and India. Blinken has praised Trump’s “Abraham Accords,” the rapprochement between Israel and countries in the Middle East.
And while Republicans in Congress accuse Biden of weakness, he is sticking to opposition to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from Russia to Germany, is refusing to remove sanctions on Iran unless it returns to compliance with the nuclear accord that Trump abandoned and is keeping up a frequent resort to financial sanctions as a tool to express disapproval.
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