Commentary
The world’s superpower continues to send diplomats to genuflect before the throne in Beijing.
Blinken’s China Trip
Leading the parade of American supplicants to Chinese leader Xi Jinping was Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Despite Mr. Blinken’s claim of “progress” being made during his visit last month, most serious longtime China watchers have panned his visit, including June Teufel, a political science professor at the University of Miami, who told The Epoch Times that “only those who equate dialogue with accomplishment could believe that Blinken’s visit was a success.”No real progress was made on contentious issues because the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) refused to budge on anything without concessions from the United States, such as ending sanctions and tariffs and restoring U.S.-China trade relations to the status quo ante 2017.
What do the optics look like to the rest of the world? Let us examine the topic.
Yellen Takes Her Turn
Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen visited China earlier this month. After the trip, she claimed that she had “direct, substantive, and productive talks” with her Chinese counterparts. CNN talked about Ms. Yellen’s “warmer reception” from the Chinese compared to that offered to Mr. Blinken while not mentioning any substantive agreements reached. Reuters was even more circumspect: “There was no breakthrough.” The article reported that Yellen went to Beijing with “no expectations,” but she met her objective of meeting with Vice Premier He Lifeng.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen (L) shakes hands with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng during a meeting at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing on July 8, 2023. Pedro Pardo/Pool/AFP via Getty Images
Ms. Yellen brought up a favorite topic during her trip by urging the Chinese to “cooperate with Washington to fight the ‘existential threat’ of climate change,” according to the BBC. She climbed onboard the climate change bandwagon in recent years, having been one of the original signers of the Economists’ Statement on Carbon Dividends in 2019, which strongly supported a carbon tax and a “carbon adjustment system” (carbon sequestration credits) to incentivize transition to “green energy sources and technologies” over time.
Never mind that John Clauser, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, recently stated that he “[doesn’t] believe there is a climate crisis,” and that “key [physical] processes are exaggerated and misunderstood by approximately 200 times” while accusing the United Nations’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of “spreading misinformation.” In short, the need for a carbon tax, sequestration credits, and other artificial incentives associated with “green new deal” policies and the notion that climate change is somehow an “existential threat” to humanity is bogus.
According to Fox News, Ms. Yellen was captured on video repeatedly bowing to her counterpart, Mr. He, which many believed was a show of weakness and exactly the kind of optics that Beijing loves showing—a high-level American politician displaying great personal deference to a Chinese official.
Unsurprisingly, the Chinese praised Ms. Yellen’s trip, as this headline from state-run People’s Daily on July 14 attests: “Why Yellen’s visit to China wins recognition from both countries.” The Chinese undoubtedly see visions of electric vehicles, solar panels, batteries, green tech, and yuan dancing in their heads.
The Climate Czar to the Rescue
Soon after Ms. Yellen’s trip, President Joe Biden’s “climate czar,” John Kerry—who travels around the world in a “family-owned” private jet in which, according to Townhall, he “burned 325 metric tons of carbon” during the first 18 months of the Biden administration–met with his counterpart, Xie Zhenhua, in Beijing. Mr. Kerry apparently called on China to cut emissions of super-polluting methane, demonstrate it can move away from coal faster, and work with the United States on the issue of deforestation.Perhaps Mr. Kerry should have heeded the admonitions of William Happer, physicist and chairman of the CO2 Coalition’s board of directors, and reverse course. “Misguided climate science has metastasized into massive shock-journalistic pseudoscience. The pseudoscience … has been promoted and extended by similarly misguided business marketing agents, politicians, journalists, government agencies, and environmentalists. In my opinion, there is no real climate crisis,” Mr. Happer said.
Climate change is of secondary importance to the Chinese regime, and no agreements on climate matters will be forthcoming unless Washington genuflects to Chinese demands, as state-run Global Times bleated the CCP line that “climate cooperation can be advanced only when the overall China-U.S. relations are heading in a positive direction.”
Who’s Next?
The supplicant parade shows no sign of ending any time soon. State-run China Daily announced on July 13 that China’s Ministry of Commerce is “open to a visit” by Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo.And when will Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin trek to Beijing for the military-to-military talks that he is keen on restarting?
Are other cabinet-level and sub-cabinet-level officials awaiting their turn?
Concluding Thoughts
It seems the Biden administration has forgotten the purpose of diplomacy: to influence the decisions and behavior of foreign governments in service of one’s own government and national security. Enough of the talk-talk; start looking out for U.S. interests.The optics of these three trips are horrible for the United States–no real accomplishments, the smiling Chinese officials agreeing to talk while admonishing senior Americans that Beijing has different priorities than the United States, and the psychological effects of weak American diplomacy on those paying attention around the world.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
