"This was more than a slight. Aside from a calculated insult to the dignity of the United States, the move indicates Xi Jinping is making clear that the accepted norms of diplomacy will not be respected by China anymore." — Charles Burton, former Canadian diplomat who served in Beijing, to Gatestone Institute, April 27, 2024.
Blinken was in China to discuss the growing list of disagreements between Washington and Beijing. Not surprisingly, he did not accomplish anything there other than register America's complaints on matters such as Beijing's support for the Russian war effort in Ukraine and unfair treatment of U.S. companies. On every major issue, the U.S. and China take different sides, and the Chinese have clearly dug in. Blinken was reduced to begging.
America is resorting to the dialogue-is-progress narrative.... In substance, therefore, Blinken in Beijing continued talking about talking.
There is no question that AI is an important topic, especially when it comes to the control of nuclear weapons. Yet this does not mean the U.S. should seek an agreement with China on that topic.
Burton and Weichert point out that China never honors agreements, so any deal with Beijing is akin to a unilateral promise.
The risk now is that the Biden administration will trade away its restrictions for meaningless promises from China's Communists.
"China is deeply committed to the weaponization of AI and would be counting its lucky communist star if the Americans basically deterred themselves with such a protocol," Weichert, also author of Biohacked: China's Race to Control Life, added.
The secretary of state should never have gone to China in the first place.
The risk now is that the Biden administration will trade away its restrictions for meaningless promises from China's Communists. Pictured: China's President Xi Jinping greets US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Beijing on April 26, 2024. (Photo by Mark Schiefelbein/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)
It is not clear whether a Chinese official was at the Beijing airport to bid farewell to Secretary of State Antony Blinken as he ended his three-day visit to China on Friday, but the send-off was in any event low-key and Chinese leader Xi Jinping slighted America's top diplomat at the end of his troubled stay.
Also, China, literally and figuratively, did not roll out the red carpet for his arrival in Shanghai on Wednesday.
Only a low-level official was on hand to greet Blinken as he stepped off the plane.
"The Chinese government flouted international protocols at the airport on the secretary of state's arrival in Shanghai and departure from Beijing," Charles Burton of the Prague-based Sinopsis think tank told Gatestone. "It was petty."
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