Rancour rules in US-China meeting

Animosity marked the start of talks on Monday between Beijing and the highest-level US envoy to visit under President Joe Biden’s administration.

Wendy Sherman meets Mongolian Culture Minister Chinbat Nomin at the Choijin Lama Temple Museum in Ulaanbaatar on her way to China on Saturday. Picture: AFP

Animosity marked the start of talks on Monday between Beijing and the highest-level US envoy to visit under President Joe Biden’s administration, as Beijing urged Washington to stop “demonising” China and the US made a “forceful” case against China’s human rights ­violations.

Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman’s visit to the northern city of Tianjin is the first major meeting between the world’s leading economies since March discussions in Anchorage between the countries’ top diplomats collapsed into mudslinging.

The preamble to Ms Sherman’s trip said she aimed to seek “guardrails” as ties deteriorate on a range of issues from cybersecurity and tech supremacy to human rights in Hong Kong and Xinjiang.

But the tone was set early in the day in statements published by Beijing. “The hope may be that by demonising China, the US could somehow... blame China for its own structural problems,” Chinese Vice-­Foreign Minister Xie Feng told Ms Sherman, in a readout issued by China’s foreign ministry.

“We urge the US to change its highly misguided mindset and dangerous policy,” Mr Xie said, adding that Washington viewed China as an “imagined enemy”.

He said the Chinese people viewed the US “adversarial rhetoric as a thinly veiled attempt to contain and suppress China”, in comments reminiscent of the fiery exchange between Washington and Beijing’s top diplomats Antony Blinken and Yang Jiechi in Alaska in March.

Ms Sherman tweeted on Monday that she “spoke about the US’s commitment to healthy competition, protecting human rights and democratic values” with Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

The US State Department said Ms Sherman had raised various concerns about China’s violations of human rights in Hong Kong, Xinjiang and Tibet.

“The Deputy Secretary and State Councillor Wang had a frank and open discussion about a range of issues, demonstrating the importance of maintaining open lines of communication between our two countries,” the State Department said.

“They discussed ways to set terms for responsible management of the US-China relationship.”

Unlike Mr Xie’s characteris­ation of the talks, US officials said the “candid” discussion was “professional” and “direct”, despite no specific outcomes achieved.

“The Deputy Secretary was very forceful in making the Chinese understand the factual information we had to support what we were talking about,” US officials said, adding that Ms Sherman had been “brutally honest” at times on issues such as China’s alleged cyberhacking.

“We’re looking for constructive ways to move forward on some of these issues ... I don’t think we were expecting any major breakthroughs.”

The US side also raised media freedoms, as well as China’s military actions in the Taiwan Strait and claims in the South China Sea.

Beijing issued an exhaustive list of demands to the US, which included lifting sanctions on Chinese officials and visa restrictions on Chinese students as well as stopping the “suppression” of Chinese firms, foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said.

Calls for a renewed probe into the origins of the coronavirus must end, Mr Zhao added, in a sweeping warning to “stop stepping on red lines”.

The visit is widely viewed as a preparatory step for an eventual meeting between Mr Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping, as US-China ties continue their freefall with little sign of ­improvement.

AFP