The High-Energy Relations Between China and the United States during Scholz’s Xi-Xi Summit and the USA’s War on Nuclear Forces
Friday’s one-day trip to Beijing is Scholz’s first as Germany’s chancellor. It was the first meeting between the head of state and the Chinese leader since the 20th Communist Party Congress gave him a third term. Scholz’s visit is also the first to China by a European leader since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has strained ties between Western European countries and Beijing.
The US statement that said that a nuclear war should never be waged and that the US opposition to the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine was important.
In the days leading up to Scholz’s trip, he went against the advice of many advisers and cabinet ministers to approve a 24.9% stake in the port of Hamburg by Chinese state-run shipping giant COSCO, a move that 69% of Germans polled by Deutschland Trend called a “wrong move.” The U.S. also voiced misgivings about the deal.
Immediately following his meeting with Xi, Scholz appeared in a press conference with Li, the outgoing Chinese premier. Scholz warned China against military intervention in Taiwan and called for the protection of human rights in the Chinese region of Xinjiang, stressing that all United Nations members have agreed to protect the rights of ethnic minorities and so calling for those protections now is not an interference in China’s internal affairs.
Li stressed that the world cannot afford any more escalation in Ukraine. He also said that China remains an attractive place for investment and both China and Germany support multipolar solutions to international problems.
The US has two important outcomes from the Indonesia summit, one of which was a joint position that Russia will not use a nuclear weapon in Ukraine and another which is an anticipated resumption of talks on climate between the US and China.
The Biden-Xi summit was a good time for the west. China remains a major violator of human rights, a threat to Taiwan and a key rival of the United States. It is important to avoid a Cold War or an accidental conflict.
It shows how hurt the entire world is by the fact that both Washington and Beijing did not address these issues together in recent months.
The talks were apparently productive. The Chinese called them “thorough, frank, and constructive.” Biden said, “We were very blunt with one another” but agreed to try to avoid a new Cold War. It wasn’t “Kumbaya,” the President said, but the two sides are perhaps less likely to start an accidental war against each other.
Leon Panetta is a former CIA chief, a White House chief of staff and a defense secretary and he spoke optimistically after talks on the sideline of the G20.
“If the result of this meeting is to put the relationship back on a more diplomatic plane, in which instead of beating each other up they can begin a dialogue on the kind of issues that need to be dealt with, I think this meeting could very well be pivotal,” Panetta told CNN’s John King on “Inside Politics.”
But at the summit in Bali, Indonesia, it was clear that while both sides want to avoid a clash now, their goals – China wants to be the preeminent Asian and potentially global power, as does the US – remain fundamentally incompatible.
“Neither side should try to remold the other in one’s own image or seek to change or even subvert the other’s system,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry said.
Equally, Xi’s public comments before the talks that “a statesman should think about and know where to lead his country. He should be aware of how to get along with other countries and the wider world, as he acknowledged new responsibility with China now a major power. They could be seen as a lecture that Washington delivered to Chinese leaders in the past, that is now going to be thrown back at the US.
Since the Nixon administration was involved in engaging China during the deep freeze in the Cold War, the foreign policy of the U.S. has come full circle.
Western capitals are troubled by Beijing’s partnership with Moscow, despite China’s charm offensive to Europe to present itself as a negotiator of peace.
The Perfect Moment for the United States and for Democracy: When President Biden and Xi met in Bali, Indonesia, two years after the G20 summit
Editor’s Note: Frida Ghitis, (@fridaghitis) a former CNN producer and correspondent, is a world affairs columnist. She is a weekly opinion contributor to CNN, a contributing columnist to The Washington Post and a columnist for World Politics Review. She has her own opinions in this commentary. View more opinion on CNN.
It took two years after Joe Biden was elected US President before the leaders of the world’s two most powerful countries could finally speak in person, but when Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping finally met in Bali, Indonesia, on Monday on the sidelines of the G20 summit, the timing could not have been any better for the United States, for democracy and for the world.
The results of the mid-term elections show that the United States will still remain engaged, Vice President Biden said. There was a bigger message. The health of America’s democracy is one of the most important signals from the midterms. The US elections not only went smoothly and peacefully, but they also dealt a harsh blow to many of the most antidemocratic elements in the country.
That’s not the only reason, however, why this was the perfect moment — from the standpoint of the United States and for democracy — for this meeting to occur: There’s much more to this geopolitical moment than who controls the US House of Representatives and Senate.
As Biden and Xi were meeting, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made an emotional, triumphant return to the devastated, now liberated city of Kherson, the one provincial capital that Russian invaders had conquered.
A year later, Putin’s push for a quick victory in Ukraine, one that would solidify Russia’s place as a top global player, looks like a disaster, and the alliance appears much less valuable to Xi.
A bloc of aggressively anti-western autocracies was launched by Xi and Putin that day. Beijing and Moscow sought to replace the rule of law with “the rule of the strongest,” warned European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
As the Ukrainians defended their country with unexpected tenacity, Biden rallied allies in a muscular push to support them.
Putin avoided confrontations with world leaders as he became a pariah on the global stage, and chose not to attend the G20.
Xi Jinping, the Prime Minister, and the Russian-Ukrainian War in the War of Attainable China
Biden is not the only leader with a strong hand. Xi has just secured an unprecedented third term as China’s leader, and he can now effectively rule for as long as he wants. He doesn’t have to worry about the upcoming elections, the press, or the opposition party. He is an absolute ruler of the country for a long time to come.
After abandoning its strict Zero- Covid policy, the country is currently fighting its worst-ever Covid outbreak, with restrictions loosened and borders partially reopened. The U-turn came after an unprecedented wave of protests in the country against the zero- Covid plan expanded to include grievances against the ruling Communist Party.
The war of aggression that China and Russia have waged against each other will be shown to be futile, as well as the fact that democracy works, defeating the effort of authoritarian countries such as China and Russia to undermine it.
Putin suggested on Sunday on Russian state television that the Ukrainians are not going to negotiate to end the war in their country. Despite Putin’s comments, Moscow’s forces have kept attacking Ukraine — a sign that peace isn’t imminent.
He said that if they invited Russia to the summit, they would need to prosecute it for war crimes at an international court.
Kuleba also said he was “absolutely satisfied” with the results of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s visit to the U.S. last week, and he revealed that the U.S. government had made a special plan to get the Patriot missile battery ready to be operational in the country in less than six months. Usually, the training takes up to a year.
During an interview with the Foreign Ministry, Kuleba said that the war will be won by Ukraine in 2023 and that diplomacy plays an important role.
U.S. embassy in Ukraine is not the best place to hold a peace conference: Vladimir Zelenskyy and Vladimir Kuleba
He said the United Nations could be the best place to hold the summit because it isn’t about giving a country an advantage. “This is really about bringing everyone on board.”
Zelenskyy presented a 10-point peace formula at the group of 20 summit in November, which included the restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity, withdrawal of Russian troops, release of all prisoners, and a tribunal for those who have been responsible for the aggression.
Kuleba said that Guterres was an efficient mediator and an efficient negotiator, and that he was a man of principle and integrity. So we would welcome his active participation.”
“They regularly say that they are ready for negotiations, which is not true, because everything they do on the battlefield proves the opposite,” he said.
Zelenskyy hadn’t been to a foreign country since the beginning of the war. Kuleba mentioned the significance of the visit and praised Washington’s efforts.
“This shows how both the United States are important for Ukraine, but also how Ukraine is important for the United States,” said Kuleba, who was part of the delegation to the U.S.
He said that the U.S. government developed a program for the missile battery to complete the training faster than usual “without any damage to the quality of the use of this weapon on the battlefield.”
While Kuleba didn’t mention a specific time frame, he said only that it will be “very much less than six months.” And he added that the training will be done “outside” Ukraine.
Kuleba has been second only to Zelenskyy in carrying out the message of Ukraine during Russia’s air and ground war in that country.
Russia’s place as a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council and exclusion from the world body was called into question by Ukraine on Monday. Kuleba believes they have prepared for this step to uncover the fraud and deny Russia’s status.
The Foreign Ministry says that Russian never went through the legal procedure for acquiring membership and taking the place of the USSR at the U.N. Security Council after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Putin and China’s cold war in Ukraine: a key player in the Russian-Publikushenko dialogue after the Covid outbreak
Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin are scheduled to speak Friday via video conference, the Kremlin said, with analysts watching for any sign of a softening in the Chinese leader’s support for the Russian president after more than 10 months of war in Ukraine and as China faces an unprecedented Covid outbreak.
The leaders will mainly discuss bilateral ties between their countries, as well as regional issues and their strategic partnership. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday.
Even though it claimed impartiality in the Ukraine conflict, China has been silent about Moscow and blames NATO for provoking the conflict.
But more than 10 months into the grinding war, the world looks much different – and the dynamic between both partners has shifted accordingly, experts say.
A lack of basic equipment has contributed to the downfall of Putin’s invasion, instead of an anticipated swift victory. Morale within parts of Russia is low, with many civilians facing economic hardship during the bitter winter.
On Thursday, Russia launched what Ukrainian officials described as one of the biggest missile barrages since the war began in February, with explosions rattling villages and cities across Ukraine, damaging civilian infrastructure and killing at least three people.
Russian officials have been warned for days that they are going to attack the power grid in order to plunge the country into darkness in a few years because of the Orthodox Christmas and New Year celebrations.
China, too, is growing more isolated in its stance toward Russia, said Alfred Wu, associate professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore.
Beijing and Washington are trying to make a deal between China and the U.S.: The New Face of China’s Diplomacy
Though India has not condemned Moscow’s invasion outright, Modi told Putin in September that now was not the time for war and urged him to move toward peace.
Stimson Center’s Sun said that “Now with domestic issues out of the way, Xi is in a better position to work on Russia.”
The two leaders could affirm their vows to cooperate economically after she said that trade between the two countries increased due to high energy prices globally.
The protest and Covid outbreak have put the leader of the nation in a more vulnerable position that could mean less material and public support for Russia.
Beijing and Washington are showing strain over a range of issues, from trade to Taiwan, as the appointment was announced Friday. He is expected to continue to work in foreign policy, as he replaced Wang Yi who was promoted to the politburo of the ruling Communist Party in October.
Qin’s career took off when he worked at the ministry’s headquarters in Beijing, where, between 2014 and 2018, he led its Protocol Department — a job in which he facilitated Xi’s meetings with world leaders. In 2018, he was appointed as a vice minister before assuming the role of Chinese ambassador to the U.S. in the summer of 2021.
But the new face of China’s diplomacy has a long to-do list, ranging from U.S.-China relations to Beijing’s partnership with Moscow, says Sun Yun, director of the China Program at the Stimson Center in Washington, D.C.
Asked by a foreign reporter in 2008 about Guns N’ Roses’ album “Chinese Democracy,” which Chinese state media called a “venomous attack” on the nation, Qin chided the journalist: “Many people don’t like this kind of music because it’s too raucous and noisy.” He added: “I’m guessing that you’re a mature adult, aren’t you?”
He “never skirted around a question, and his attitude was clear-cut and forthright,” the university wrote on its website in 2018, when Qin was promoted to a vice minister.
Qin articulated his thinking on diplomacy in an interview in 2013. “Diplomacy is complex and systematic work. It can be hard with some softness, or soft with some hardness,” he said. “It can also be both hard and soft. The two may transform into each other as time goes on.
After joining China’s foreign ministry in 1988, Qin was first assigned to work for the Beijing bureau of the United Press International, a U.S. news agency, on a short stint. At the time, non-Chinese news outlets could not directly employ Chinese nationals and were assigned local employees by the authorities.
After becoming a diplomat, he devoted himself to Western European affairs, serving in the Chinese embassy in London as a third and second secretary and later as a minister.
Wang insisted that peace in Ukraine and elsewhere in the world is Beijing’s top foreign policy priority, as is respect for the sovereignty of independent nations. Within the same breath, he warned against international interference on the issue of Taiwan. Wang said fighting Taiwanese independence forces meant maintaining peace across the Taiwan Strait.
The United States and China will likely start a military conflict if the Taiwanese authorities continue to push for independence.
In a show of unity, the leaders of the two nuclear powers vowed to have a relationship with “no limits.” It looked like a major turning point in a global realignment of power.
In addition to fortifying NATO, the administration of President Joe Biden has achieved great success, so the US must aim to avoid creation of a unified force of aggressive antidemocratic regimes.
The rule of the strongest is not effective when you cannot win, and that is how Russia’s plans went awry.
Is Xi in or out with Putin? It seems that Xi would like it both ways. He wants the relationship with a country that has invaded its neighbor without provocation, but he’s trying to present himself as a responsible global leader; an alternative to the democratic Western model for other countries to follow.
The US intelligence says that Russia bought shell from North Korea, which denies its involvement in a war that is beyond the pale.
Russia is killing Ukrainian civilians and destroying Ukraine’s infrastructure with Iranian drones. Iran denied that it was supplying weapons to Russia.
Beijing has a complicated relationship with Tehran. Iran was incensed when a joint statement after the Saudi officials met with Xi noted that Iransupports terrorist and sectarian groups.
The first Iranian president in 20 years went to China this week. The trip, at Xi’s invitation, ostensibly aims to implement an agreement for a 25-year strategic cooperation pact the two reached at a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in 2021.
Such suspicions are compounded by claims by US officials that Beijing is considering stepping up its partnership with Moscow by supplying Russia’s military with “lethal support.”
Territorial and sovereignty integrity of all countries will be respected in China’s proposal, Wang said, adding that Beijing will continue to work for peace.
China’s top diplomat Wang Yi also dedicated most of his speech to the conflict in Ukraine, stressing he was “deeply worried” about the “long-term effect of this war” and warning against the return of a “Cold War mentality.”
And European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen told CNN on Saturday: “We need more proof that China isn’t working with Russia, and we aren’t seeing that now.”
Putin said Beijing has questions and concerns over the invasion, which appeared to be an admission of differing views on the war.
China’s Foreign Ministry said the visit to Moscow will provide an opportunity for China and Russia to continue to develop their strategic partnership and “exchange views” on “international and regional hotspot issues of shared interest.”
The meeting will take place in Munich, Germany, where both are attending a global security conference, said the source, who declined to be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
The High-Frequency Interaction between the United States and China After the February 4 Shootdown of a High-Energy Balloon
There has been a spike in tension between the United States and China since the February 4 shoot-down of a Chinese balloon.
Beijing insists the balloon was a civilian craft for scientific research, and that shooting it down was an overreaction and a violation of international practice.
The incident came at a time when relations between Beijing and Washington are already strained, and both sides are starting to take small steps to repair the damage. Blinken had been scheduled to visit Beijing on Feb. 5-6, but postponed the trip after the balloon made headlines when it was sighted in the skies over Montana.
There is no clarity on how helpful the meeting will be in stabilizing bilateral relations, as both sides have been sticking to their guns.
The U.S. was not able to seek dialogue while it took steps to deepen the crisis, as a possible reference to the sanctions imposed on Chinese companies.
The US has recently begun seeing “disturbing” trendlines in China’s support for Russia’s military and there are signs that Beijing wants to “creep up to the line” of providing lethal military aid to Russia without getting caught, US officials familiar with the intelligence told CNN.
According to CNN, US officials were concerned enough with the intel that they shared it with their allies in Germany. According to a US readout, on the sidelines of the conference Saturday, Blinken raised the issue with Wang and warned him about the consequences.
The Secretary of State raised the issue when he met with his Chinese counterpart at the conference, officials said.
“The Secretary was quite blunt in warning about the implications and consequences of China providing material support to Russia or assisting Russia with systematic sanctions evasion,” a senior State Department official told reporters.
Wang and the Security Conference in Kiev: The U.S. Forces and their Superiors are Critique of Crimes against Humanity in Ukraine
This warfare cannot continue to rage on. We need to think about what efforts we can make to bring this warfare to an end,” Wang said at the conference.
There is no distinction between private companies and the state in China, and we have seen Chinese companies provide non-lethal support to Russia.
“The concern that we have now is based on information we have that they’re considering providing lethal support, and we’ve made very clear to them that that would cause a serious problem for us and in our relationship,” Blinken said.
China and Russia publicly declared a “no-limits” friendship just before Russia invaded Ukraine last year, and Wang is set to visit Russia this month, CNN has reported.
The security conference attracts heads of state, generals, intelligence chiefs, and top diplomats from around the world.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine set the tone of the three-day conference by urging Western leaders to act rather than talk, calling via videolink for the speedy deliveries of weapons and warning of dwindling supplies on the battleground.
The US made its presence felt this year with a record number of delegates including bipartisan and bicameral representation.
But with delegations attending from every continent, beyond Europe and the members of NATO, broader geopolitical issues were at play, both on the conference stage and on the sidelines.
U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris used her speech to accuse Russian forces and their superiors of crimes against humanity in Ukraine, saying that was the conclusion of an investigation by the State Department.
Harris described how Russian soldiers are deliberately targeting civilians, citing evidence of “widespread and systemic” rape, torture, execution-style killings, beatings, electrocution and deportation, including children who, she said, have been cruelly separated from their parents.
She urged delegates not to look the other way, saying: “Think of the four-year-old girl who the United Nations recently reported was sexually assaulted by a Russian soldier.”
The U.S. Secretary of State said in a statement released at the conference: “We reserve crimes against humanity determinations for the most egregious crimes.”
What do we really want to learn from Europe and what do we need from Warfare in the Middle East? The case of China, Israel and the United States
Europe’s leaders promised to invest more in weapons while Wang Yi called for peace in Ukraine, leaving unanswered what peace in the region means.
After much “will they, won’t they”, Blinken and Wang sat down together on the last night of the conference, in the first high-level meeting between the two countries since the U.S. shot down an alleged Chinese surveillance balloon.
The U.S. State Department said that Wang was warned against Beijing helping Russia or skirting Western sanctions, as well as that the US was not seeking conflict with China.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has said that NATO is using them quicker than Europe can and that member states must work with the defense industry to scale up their production.
The Chancellor of Germany asked his European partners to deliver the battle tanks to Ukraine without delay. He joked during the Q&A that it was ironic he’s now having to urge others to deliver Leopard tanks quickly, after they put pressure on him to do the same in previous weeks.
Scholz’s new Defense Minister Boris Pistorius continued in the same vein and pushed for higher military spending within Europe and NATO. He went one step further than Scholz’s promise to meet the NATO target of spending 2% of GDP on defense, and called on the NATO alliance to agree on 2% as a minimum commitment, aiming for higher. Germany isn’t projected to meet the 2% target for at least another couple of years, despite more money being devoted to the budget.
Scholz remained tight-lipped about requests from Ukraine to send fighter jets, having publicly said no on several occasions. He said Germany’s support for Kyiv is resolute but warned against hasty decisions and the dangers of escalation.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/19/1158184942/4-takeaways-from-this-years-important-munich-security-conference
Kremlin critic Christoph Heusgen criticized the US in the wake of the brutal Ukrainian-Russian border wall-boson invasion
Prominent Kremlin critics — including exiled oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, chess champion Gary Kasparov, and Yulia Navalnaya, the wife of jailed opposition political Alexey Navalny — were pointedly offered seats instead.
The Munich Security Conference is known for promoting dialogue, even between adversaries, but MSC Chair Christoph Heusgen says he did not want the conference to serve as a podium for Russian propaganda.
Heusgen – who served as former Chancellor Angela Merkel’s top foreign policy aide – admitted in an interview earlier this week that he left last year’s conference convinced Russia would not invade Ukraine. The invasion began four days later.
As US President Joe Biden touched down in Ukraine to meet with his counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday, China’s top diplomat was traveling in the opposite direction, on his way to Russia.
The optics of the two trips – taking place just days before the one-year anniversary of the brutal war on Friday – underscores the sharpening of geopolitical fault lines between the world’s two superpowers.
“We do not add fuel to the fire, and we’re against reaping benefits from this crisis,” Wang said in a thinly veiled dig at the US, echoing the propaganda messaging that regularly made China’s nightly prime-time news program – that the US is intentionally prolonging the war because its arms manufacturers are earning fat profits from weapon sales.
He urged European officials to think about what role Europe can play in bringing lasting peace to Europe.
The Foreign Ministry of China blasted the United States for blaming and spreading false information.
The US supplies a steady stream of weapons to the battlefield while the Chinese do not. The US side is not qualified to lecture China, and we wouldn’t accept the US trying to change Sino-Russian relations, according to a ministry spokesman.
“Who is calling for dialogue and peace? And who is handing out knives and encouraging confrontation? The international community can see clearly,” the spokesperson said.
The epoch of free trade in the early 21st century and the role of Moscow in shaping the next era of zero-Covid policy
Beijing had avoided actions that could cause a big blow to the economy due to zero-Covid policy.
And while Beijing’s pro-Russian rhetoric appears to have softened in recent months, its support for Moscow – when measured by its annual trade, diplomatic engagements and schedule of joint military exercises – has bolstered over the past year.