China Says Still Committed to Building Healthy, Stable US Ties

China’s attitude towards developing a healthy, stable and constructive relationship with the United States remains unchanged, China’s foreign minister Qin Gang said on Saturday.

China hopes the US will stop using “unscrupulous means” to contain and suppress the country, Gang added.

Beijing hopes the two nations will work together to promote bilateral relations to overcome difficulties and return to healthy and stable developments, Qin said as he met US-friendly organisations and business representatives in Beijing.

 

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Qin said China will continue to provide a better business environment for global companies, including US firms.

The statement from the Chinese foreign minister comes as Beijing hosts executives from multinationals and representatives from foreign organisations at the ongoing China Development Forum.

More than 100 overseas delegates are attending the event that ends Monday.

 

‘Deepening level of suspicion’

Gang’s comments also come amid worsening ties between the world’s two biggest economies and growing fears of their financial decoupling.

Last month, US President Joe Biden said he planned to speak to his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping to clear the air after the spy balloon saga. However, five weeks later, the call still hasn’t happened.

Instead, after two months of diplomatic sniping and Xi’s trip this week to Moscow where he and Russian President Vladimir Putin jointly denounced the United States, US-China relations have slid to what some say is the worst since the countries normalised ties in the 1970s.

Further complicating matters are stopovers in the United States next week and in early April by Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen. Sources familiar with the planning say Tsai may meet Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy during a “transit” stop in California on her way back from Latin America.

“This is not a good moment for American diplomacy,” said William Kirby, a professor of Chinese studies at Harvard University. “The last time China and Russia were this close was 1957, when Mao Zedong declared in Moscow, ‘The East Wind will prevail over the West Wind.'”

“In past times, when the relationship encountered a major dip, as after the Tiananmen massacre of 1989 or the Taiwan Strait crisis of 1995-96, the two countries made serious efforts to reestablish a stable foundation under their relations,” said Michael Swaine, a China expert at the Quincy Institute.

“Now a deepening level of suspicion, vitriol, and finger-pointing dominate almost all exchanges, preventing substantive engagement.”

A senior US administration official said Washington was urging China to keep communication channels open despite Tsai Ing-wen’s planned stopovers, which are sensitive given that China claims self-governed Taiwan as its own.

The official said Washington was open to China’s views on whether to conduct a Xi-Biden call or reschedule a trip to China by Secretary of State Antony Blinken postponed due to the balloon incident.

Rick Waters, the US deputy assistant secretary of state for China, Taiwan and Mongolia, is currently in China and a person familiar with his plans said he would likely seek to lay the groundwork for Blinken to visit.

 

• Reuters, with additional editing by Vishakha Saxena

 

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