BEIJING — US Secretary of State Antony Blinken concluded his latest visit to China with a stop at a Beijing record store, where he bought albums by Taylor Swift and Chinese rocker Dou Wei, in a symbolic nod to cross-cultural exchanges already the realization that he had been promoting for three days.
Music, he said at the Li-Pi store on the way to the airport Friday night, “is the best connector, regardless of geography.”
However, Swift’s “Midnights” and Dou Wei’s “Black Dream” could easily represent the seemingly intractable divisions in the deeply troubled relationship between the world’s two largest economies, for which both sides publicly and privately blame the other. .
Blinken and his Chinese interlocutors, including Chinese President Xi Jinping and Foreign Minister Wang Yi, referred to these divisions even as they extolled the virtues of keeping communication channels open to manage these differences and avoid misunderstandings and miscalculations.
Blinken went to great lengths to defend the importance of US-China exchanges at all levels. In Shanghai, he ate at a famous dumpling soup restaurant, attended a Chinese basketball playoff game, and visited American and Chinese students at the New York University branch. In his official meetings with Chinese leaders in Beijing, he repeatedly spoke of improvements in relations over the past year.
But he also emphasized that the United States has serious and growing concerns with China’s policies and practices on local, regional and global stages. And, he said, the United States would not back down. “The United States will always defend our core interests and values,” she said.
On several occasions, he criticized Chinese overproduction of electric vehicles that threatened to have detrimental effects on 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 says has allowed Russia to escalate its attacks on Ukraine and threaten European security, the United States would act to stop it. “I made it clear that if China doesn’t address this issue, we will,” Blinken told reporters after meeting Xi.
Chinese officials were equally blunt, saying that while relations have generally improved from a low point last year over the downing of a Chinese surveillance balloon, they remained tense.
“The two countries should help each other succeed instead of harming each other, seek common ground and reserve differences instead of engaging in fierce competition, and honor words with actions instead of saying one thing and doing the opposite.” Xi told Blinken in an unofficial speech. -very veiled accusation of American hypocrisy.
Wang, the foreign minister, said China is fed up with what it sees as U.S. meddling in human rights, Taiwan and the South China Sea and efforts to restrict its trade and relations with other countries. “The negative factors in the relationship continue to increase and consolidate and the relationship faces all kinds of disruptions,” he said. He urged the United States “not to step on China’s red lines on sovereignty, security and development interests.”
Or, as Yang Tao, director general of North American and Oceania Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said, according to the official Xinhua news agency: “If the United States always regards China as its main rival, China-State relations United they will continue.” face difficulties and many problems.”
Still, Flashing pushed toward compromise at all levels. He announced a new agreement to hold talks with China about the threats posed by artificial intelligence, but lamented the shortage of American students studying in China: fewer than 900 now, compared with more than 290,000 Chinese in the United States. He said both sides wanted to increase that figure. number.
“We have an interest in this, because if our future leaders – whether in government, in business, civil society, climate, technology and other fields – if they are going to be able to collaborate, if they want to be able to solve big problems, If you want to resolve our differences, you will need to know and understand each other’s language, culture and history,” he said. But he added a caveat that the Chinese would probably consider a barb.
“What I told my PRC counterparts on this visit is that if you want to attract more Americans to China, particularly students, the best way to do it is to create the conditions that allow learning to flourish anywhere: a free and open discussion of ideas. “, access to a wide range of information, ease of travel, confidence in the security and privacy of participants,” Blinken said.
Those are problems that neither Taylor Swift nor Dou Wei can overcome.