After burning bridges with 68-year-old Russian President Vladimir Putin, 78-year-old President Joe Biden looks to do the same with China when he sends 58-year-old Secretary of State Tony Blinken and 44-year-old National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan to meet March 18 in Anchorage, Alaska with top Chinese officials. Biden spent his first 50-days attacking Putin over nothing, an internal affair with 44-year-old Russian dissident Alexi Navalny. Biden joined 62-year-ool Brussels-based European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen slapping the Kremlin with sanctions for jailing Navalny for nearly three years. Why Washington and Brussels are meddling in an internal Russian matter is anyone’s guess. One thing’s for sure, it’s turned back the clock on U.S.-EU-Russian relations to Cold War lows. Based on new reports, Biden looks to do the same thing with China.
Expected to meet with China’s senior diplomat Yang Jiechi and Chinese State Councilor Wang Li, Blinken and Sullivan think they’re going to lecture China about what they both call a “genocide” of Uighurs in Northwestern Xinjiang Province and the pro-democracy crackdown in Hong Kong, where 67-year-old Chinese President Xi Jinping has ordered Hong Kong authorities to street demonstrations. If you can believe it, the media says U.S. relations with 74-year-old President Donald Trump were contentious over his term in office. Xi and the Chinese Communist Party [CCP] don’t find tough trade deal negotiating grounds for contentious relations. What Xi and CCP find objectionable, offensive and unacceptable is being accused by Washington of “genocide” in Xinjiang and repression in Hong Kong. Whether Biden admits it or not, Trump had good relations with Xi.
Sullivan said at a daily press briefing today that the White House “believes that we are going to end up in a stiff competition with China, and we intend to prevail in that competition,” Sullivan said, stating the obvious, except for the fact that by anyone’s account, China’s winning the foot race. Spurred on by the combative Washington press, Blinken and Sullivan think they’re going to get anywhere lecturing Beijing on the Uighurs and Hong Kong. They’ve spent the last 50 days lecturing Putin on how he should release Navalny from prison when it’s not any of the U.S.’s business. Blinken and Sullivan actually think that lecturing China about the Uighurs or Hong Kong is going to open doors to more dialogue. Whatever happens in Xinjiang or Hong Kong, Xi regards, like Putin with Navalny, as an internal matter, not subject to outside pressure from Washington, Brussels or anyone else.
Blinken and Sullivan plan to talk about “how the U.S. intends to proceed at a strategic level,” whatever that means. One things for sure, lecturing Xi on how to handle Uighurs and pro-democracy dissidents in Hong Kong won’t open any doors for the Biden administration. Trump stuck to only business, refraining from criticizing Beijing for its human rights violations. World leaders aren’t naïve about poverty, poor health care, unequal opportunity, homelessness, hunger, racism and other social problems that Biden, himself admitted, “systemic racism” exists in the U.S. When the President of the United States admits to “systemic racism,” it makes it more difficult for Blinken and Sullivan to sit on high horses lecturing foreign leaders about human rights. When Blinken and Sullivan talk about “avenues of cooperation,” they’re not talking about China’s treatment of Uighurs and Hong Kong protesters.
If Blinken wants to stop repeating the same mistakes with China that they’ve done with Putin, they need to table the discussion about Uighurs and Hong Kong. Find common ground involves working with China’s Sinovac on making more Covid-19 vaccines available around the globe. With the U.S. and EU facing vaccine shortages, working with China and Russia is essential for world health. Yet that’s not what Biden did antagonizing Putin from Day 1. Putin has the world’s most popular vaccine, Sputnik V, that was approved in Russia Nov. 11, 2020, a month before Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna. But with the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine losing approval due to blood clots, the world can’t afford a balkanized response during a global pandemic. Putin’s Sputnk V is 92% effective and safe according to the British Medical Journal Lancet, independently verified, prompting orders from around the globe.
Biden and Blinken have alienated Putin so much he’s on a war footing when it comes to the U.S. and EU. What good did it do to slap the Kremlin with sanctions over Navalny, a known revolutionary seeking nothing short than topping the Russian government. What would the U.S. government do if Putin backed an opposition figure that sought to overthrow the U.S. government? Democrats accused Trump of trying to overthrow the U.S. government, something Putin said the Jan. 6 Capitol roil as a “stroll,” rejecting the idea it was a serious “insurrection” as Democrats contended. Biden and Sullivan hailed the so-called “Quad,” U.S., Australia, Japan and India, as a new buffer against China’s aggression, especially in the South China Sea. Whatever Blinken and Sullivan talk about with China March 18, they should refrain from accusing Beijing of “genocide” and a “crackdown” in Hong Kong.
