China has extended its list of demands to the United States if it wants to improve relations when senior officials met Saturday.
Secretary of State John Blinken and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi both called their talks in Bali “constructive,” and Wang said they created conditions for further high-level engagement.
However, he also accused the United States of failing to repair their damaged relations after the Donald Trump era.
According to state news agency Xinhua, Wang Yi said, “China-U.S. relations are still not free from the dilemma created by the previous U.S. administration and are even facing increasing challenges.”
He added that the U.S. wrongly sees China as a threat and said, “If this ‘threat’ doctrine is allowed to develop further, U.S. policy toward China will fall into a dead end from which there is no exit.”
Wang said China made four demands of Blinken: remedial measures from Washington; a list of Beijing’s priorities for concern; changes it wants to make to U.S. legislation and eight areas where the two sides can work together.
Details of that list have not been released. Last July, China had already presented its list of key concerns and desired remedial measures, including calls to lift visa restrictions on Communist Party members and to treat Chinese citizens in the United States more fairly.
Talks between Blinken and Wang during the G20 meeting in Bali lasted five hours and included a lunch meeting.
Topics of discussion included the ongoing war in Ukraine, Taiwan, Hong Kong and the U.S. presence in the Indo-Pacific region.
“Despite the complexity of our relationship, I can say with confidence that our delegation found today’s discussions useful, candid and constructive,” Blinken told reporters after the talks.
“The United States hopes that our lines of communication with Beijing will remain open.”
During the talks, Wang accused the U.S. of failing to deliver on promises made by Xi and Joe Biden at a virtual summit in November to improve U.S.-China relations.
Wang said the U.S. is still building regional alliances to contain China, supporting a move toward Taiwan independence, interfering in China’s internal affairs under the guise of human rights and smearing China’s political system.
The United States has pledged to support Taiwan but said it does not support unilateral changes to the status quo.
According to Xinhua, Wang said, “The U.S. side must not underestimate the Chinese people’s firm determination to defend territorial sovereignty and must not make subversive mistakes that undermine peace in the Taiwan Strait.”
Blinken said the U.S. is concerned about “Beijing’s increasingly provocative rhetoric and activities on issues such as Taiwan, Hong Kong, forced labor in Xinjiang and the treatment of ethnic minorities in Tibet.”
On Ukraine, Blinken said the U.S. is concerned about China’s alliance with Russia, adding that Beijing is not neutral in the crisis.
“I would start by making the proposition that it’s very difficult to be neutral when it comes to this kind of aggression. There is a clear aggressor. There’s a clear victim,” he said.
“But even if you accept that premise, I don’t think China is actually engaging in a way that suggests neutrality. It supports Russia at the United Nations. It continues to do so. It amplified the Russian propaganda back just as Russia was massing its troops.”
Blinken said the U.S. is not asking countries in the Indo-Pacific region to pick a side, but rather “give them a choice.” He said he hopes China’s own activities in the region will lead to a “championship fight” that benefits everyone.
He also said the two countries could work on climate change, food security and global health, while Beijing said the two sides had agreed to create better conditions for their consular and diplomatic officials.
“China and the United States are two big countries and it is necessary for the two countries to maintain normal contacts,” Wang told reporters ahead of the talks. “We do need to work together to ensure that this relationship will continue to move forward on the right track.”
Diplomatic observers said the meeting paved the way for contacts between the two top leaders, despite many differences.
“The talks were considered useful and constructive, which means both sides are making progress,” said Pang Zhongying, a professor of international relations at Sichuan University. “Both countries recognize that deteriorating relations can cause harm on both sides.”
Pang said Wang and Blinken may have discussed arrangements for more high-level talks.
Liu Zhiqin, a senior research fellow at the Chongyang Institute of Finance at Renmin University, said talks between the two countries will continue.
“The Biden administration will remain very tough on China economically, but diplomatically he will probably be more flexible,” he said.
The differences between the two countries “are unlikely to prevent them from communicating,” he said.
However, another senior fellow at the institute, He Weiwen, said, “Talks are only one aspect of bilateral exchanges …… but they also require action.”
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