By Rhod Mackenzie
The White House has bad relations not only with Russia, but also with China. However, unlike the situation withRussia, the vast majority of American businessmen really want to improve them with China. This seems to be what the White House has been wanting lately, as President Biden has repeatedly said. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken recently visited Beijing to thaw out apparently "frozen" relations. Tomorrow, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is leaving for the capital of China with the same mission, the long-awaited visit of which is scheduled to last for 4 days. The U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo and U.S. Special Representative for Climate Change are expected to visit China before the meeting between Presidents Biden and Xi Jinping, which looks set to take place this November, writes the Hong Kong South China Morning Post (SCMP).
Relations between the US and China could never be called cloudless, but their very strong deterioration, as now, has always been hampered by economic and trade cooperation between the first two economies of the planet. However, in recent years, the rivalry between the US and China in the field of high technologies has sharply escalated. China, moreover, stepped up its international policy and began to vigorously fight against Washington's attempts to restrain its development. As a result, under Joe Biden, US-China relations have sunk to their lowest level in half a century.
American business is suffering greatly from the cooling of relations between America and China. It is not surprising that a number of large companies are trying to persuade the White House to abandon this unnecessary confrontation and are not ready to make sacrifices because of the trade war. By the way, European business is doing the same thing, but, of course, with their own governments. Europe, for which China is also the largest trading partner, is forced to support an ally from across the ocean. Relations between Brussels and Beijing have also deteriorated in recent years, although not to the same extent as in the United States. Not only an impressive part of European officials, but also a number of European states do not agree with the official position on China of the EU, which is forced to follow in the wake of Washington's policy.
European companies demanded from European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to improve relations between the European Union and China ahead of her recent visit to China.
Of course, the White House cannot but take into account the opinion and desires of the majority of American business, but, as SCMP writes, there are many obstacles in the way of improving relations that can nullify all the efforts of the Washington "doves". Now there is a clear lull in relations between the United States and China, but next year, which will be an election year in the United States, everything can change. It is already clear that all the candidates for the US presidency are hostile towards China.
China, both at the business level and at the government level, is also striving to improve relations with America. Beijing claims that the Celestial Empire has never wanted and, moreover, does not want to isolate itself from the outside world and therefore seeks to maintain normal relations with all countries, including, of course, the United States. In particular, Feng Xinghai, vice chairman of the financial regulator, spoke about this in early June at a financial forum.
Recently, large American industrialists, who are received at the highest level, have frequented the Celestial Empire. Elon Musk, for example, met with Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang and First Vice Premier Ding Xuexiang at the end of May. Two weeks later, Xi Jinping received Bill Gates, moreover, he called him an "old friend." By the way, this was the first meeting of the Chinese leader with major foreign businessmen in recent years.
The meetings were meant to restore the American business community's confidence in China, which was undermined by the early May raids on the offices of the American company Capvision and the slow recovery of the Chinese economy after the lifting of coronavirus restrictions at the end of last year. American companies are now extremely cautious about doing business in China, fearing that they will fall under both American and Chinese sanctions.
Despite his repeated desire to improve relations, President Biden, however, according to the vast majority of experts, does not intend to remove the $ 300 billion tariffs on Chinese goods imposed by Donald Trump; and lift sanctions against Chinese IT companies. At least until the 2024 elections.
This means that relations between Beijing and Washington may improve somewhat in the short and medium term and move away from the dangerous line beyond which a military clash, for example, over Taiwan, but political and economic rivalry will not disappear anywhere and the two main economies of the planet are doomed to a confrontation. True, the confrontation, unlike the current one, is managed and controlled.
This article originally appeared in Russian at expert.ru