The US and China talk past each other on most issues, but at least they’re still talking

BEIJING — US Secretary of State Antony Blinken wrapped up his just-concluded final visit to China with a stop at a record store in Beijing, where he bought albums by Taylor Swift and Chinese rocker Dou Wei in a symbolic nod to cross-cultural exchanges and understanding that he had three days of advertising.

Music, he said Friday evening at the Li-Pi store on the way to the airport, “is the best connection, regardless of geographic location.”

Yet Swift’s “Midnights” and Dou Wei’s “Black Dream” could just as easily represent the seemingly intractable divisions in the deeply troubled relationship between the world’s two largest economies, both sides blaming the other publicly and privately.

Blinken and his Chinese interlocutors, including Chinese President Xi Jinping and Foreign Minister Wang Yi, all referenced these rifts even as they extolled the virtues of keeping channels of communication open to manage these disagreements and avoid misunderstandings and miscalculations.

Blinken went out of his way to defend the importance of US-China exchanges at all levels. In Shanghai, he ate at a famous soup dumpling restaurant, attended a Chinese basketball game and visited American and Chinese students at the New York University branch. During his official meetings with Chinese leaders in Beijing, he repeatedly spoke of improvements in ties over the past year.

But he also emphasized that the US has serious and growing concerns about Chinese policies and practices at the local, regional and global levels. And, he said, the US would not back down. “America will always defend our core interests and values,” he said.

On several occasions, he denounced China’s overproduction of electric vehicles, which threatened to harm American and European automakers, and complained that China was not doing enough to stop the production and export of synthetic opioid precursors.

At one point, he bluntly warned that if China does not end support for Russia’s defense industrial sector, something the Biden administration believes has allowed Russia to step up its attacks on Ukraine and threaten European security, the U.S. would take action to stop this. “I have made it clear that if China does not address this problem, we will,” Blinken told reporters after meeting with Xi.

Chinese officials were also direct, saying that while relations have generally improved since their low point last year after the shooting down of a Chinese surveillance balloon, they remain fraught.

“The two countries should help each other succeed rather than hurt each other, seek common ground and reserve differences rather than engage in cruel competition, and honor words with actions rather than saying one thing but doing the opposite do,” Xi told Blinken in an unrequited tone. -so veiled accusation of American hypocrisy.

Wang, the foreign minister, said China is fed up with what it sees as US meddling in human rights, Taiwan and the South China Sea and efforts to restrict its trade and relations with other countries. “Negative factors in the relationship are still increasing and increasing, and the relationship is facing all kinds of disruptions,” he said. He urged the US “not to tread on China’s red lines when it comes to China’s sovereignty, security and development interests.”

Or, as Yang Tao, the director general of North American and Oceania Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, put it according to the official Xinhua News Agency: “If the United States always regards China as its main rival, relations between China and the US are constantly changing. faced with problems and many problems.”

Still, Blinken urged engagement at all levels. He announced a new agreement to hold talks with China on the threats posed by artificial intelligence, but lamented the shortage of American students studying in China – fewer than 900 now, compared to more than 290,000 Chinese in the US. He said both sides wanted to increase that number.

“We have an interest in this because if our future leaders – whether it be in government, whether it be in business, civil society, climate, technology and other areas – if they will be able to work together , if they want to, If they can solve big problems, if they want to overcome our differences, they will have to know and understand each other’s language, culture and history,” he said. But he added a caveat that the Chinese would likely see as a barb.

“What I said to my counterparts in the People’s Republic of China during this visit is that if they want to attract more Americans here to China, especially students, the best way to do that is to create the conditions that make it possible for learning can flourish anywhere – a free and open discussion of ideas. , access to a wide range of information, ease of travel, confidence in the safety and privacy of participants,” Blinken said.

Those are problems that neither Taylor Swift nor Dou Wei can overcome.