Xi Jinping’s Hard-Line Diplomacy Plunging China Into ‘Political Peril’—Military Expert
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China’s hard-line diplomacy will end “in tragedy” and plunge the country into “political peril,” while its hawkish posture was also accelerating the formation of an “anti-China alliance” just two months into the presidency of Joe Biden, policy experts in Taipei and Beijing warned this week.
The most recent high-profile exchange between officials from Washington and Beijing took place in Alaska last month, when Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Chinese foreign affairs director Yang Jiechi were involved in a televised clash over their respective countries’ red lines.
Yang’s attitude was “proud” and the rhetoric from both sides “sharp” said Ma Chen-kun, a China military affairs professor at National Defense University in Taiwan.
Xi Jinping’s most senior diplomat, who served a term as Beijing’s ambassador to Washington until 2005, left the summit in Anchorage a national hero, his fiery exchange with Blinken having “stoked a wave of nationalism and patriotism” that also found its way into the Chinese military, Ma said during a U.S. foreign policy discussion hosted by Taipei’s Prospect Foundation think tank on Tuesday.
Having entered the U.S.-China dialogue after “two plus two” meetings in Tokyo and Seoul, Blinken then flew to Brussels for a sit-down with European leaders. What followed was a series of commitments by the U.K., France and Germany to send warships to the Indo-Pacific—a development the Chinese government likened to a “new Eight-Nation Alliance,” Ma added.
While references to the multinational coalition of 1900 may be exaggerated, China should take recent developments as a “warning,” Ma said. The alliance formed during the latter years of the Qing dynasty after the rulers of China’s last empire put their own reputation above the true national interest, the researcher continued.
“It ended in tragedy,” Ma added. “Yang Jiechi’s emphasis on China’s national dignity… follows the same logic of officials in the late Qing dynasty. It will plunge China into international political peril.”