America’s new Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, seemed surprised by the tough talk from his Chinese counterparts when they met in Anchorage last week. He shouldn’t have been, because they were responding in an entirely predictable way to his words just moments before.
Blinken had pressed China hard on such sensitive issues as Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Taiwan, and asserted America’s right to reprimand China on these issues as the leader and guardian of “the rules-based international order”.
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Hugh White is the author of The China Choice and How To Defend Australia, and the Quarterly Essays Power Shift, Hard New World, Without America and Sleepwalk to War. He is an emeritus professor of strategic studies at ANU.
