“The United States aims to sustain dialogue with China and collaborate on addressing some of the world's most pressing issues and also domestic issues,” said the CGTN Radio host, who frequently discusses China-related issues in mainstream media in South Africa, India, and Central Asia. But the US maintains its own motives in such discussions, according to Ge, frequently using China as a scapegoat for its own geopolitical and economic difficulties.
The political commentator joined Sputnik’s Fault Lines program Friday to discuss the issue.
“It is interesting to see how China-US relations develop today,” said Ge as host Jamarl Thomas noted the often chaotic nature of diplomacy between the two countries in recent years. US President Joe Biden referred to Chinese President Xi Jinping as a “dictator” the last time the two met in the United States, a gaffe judged to have damaged relations between the two countries.
“We are left with a contradiction [between] messages and reality,” she said. “On the one hand, we hear relations are more stable with the personal diplomacy of [Janet] Yellen and Blinken in attending cultural events, etcetera. in line with the increase of flights and other types of people-to-people exchanges. These were impossible last year when the weather balloon lies and provocation in Taiwan and the South China Sea were edging towards a military confrontation.”
“On the other hand we have become accustomed to anticipating negative developments shortly after high level US officials depart, often leading to any positive outreach being subsequently retracted or modified by the American side… Washington has been testing China's limits unilaterally,” the commentator highlighted.
Ge noted that Biden signed a bill likely banning the Chinese-owned social media app TikTok shortly after Blinken arrived in Shanghai this week, an unprecedented measure. TikTok CEO Shou Chew, a Singaporean businessman, has vowed to oppose pressure to sell the social media platform to an American owner, which would result in the application being banned unless the company succeeds in launching a judicial challenge.
US politicians have cast TikTok as a threat to US security and Americans’ privacy, but a raft of concessions won by former US President Donald Trump resulted in all data associated with the platform being hosted in the United States, with periodic auditing from US-based companies. Critics have claimed the strongarm tactic is merely a strategy to undermine competition from a successful Chinese competitor, as when the United States pressured European allies to ban 5G technology from the Shenzhen-based Huawei.
“Imagine them [China] looking at Elon Musk and saying that you need to sell Tesla or else,” suggested Thomas. “It's just astonishing stuff.”
“These meetings serve more like guard rails, which aren't meant to stabilize or improve relations but to keep them from spiraling out of control while the US continues to implement containment policies, continues to stack military assets in the region, continues to pressure the Chinese government wherever possible,” said Ge. “And also continues to attack Chinese companies.”
Discussion then turned towards the United States’ criticism of China’s economic relationship with Russia. Beijing has continued to conduct trade with Moscow in defiance of US calls to isolate the country after the launch of its special military operation in the Donbass in 2022. Some have even blamed China for Russia’s success in the conflict, claiming Beijing provides the country with crucial components for military technology.
China has resisted what it views as coercion against the country’s sovereign right to determine its trade relations.
“In essence the US is now raising the Chinese military assistance to Russia issue to forcibly link China and Russia,” claimed Ge. “Again, aiming to smear, isolate and to suppress China… China, like many other countries, like Turkiye, and Egypt, etcetera, adopts a more neutral stance toward the Russia-Ukraine conflict. They take the needs of the two sides into consideration, not just Ukraine's, but also Russia's.”
“Many scholars believe the US has every reason to prolong this war,” she added. “China is not a party or participant in the Ukraine crisis, and China and Russia have the right to carry out normal economic and trade cooperation, which should not be interfered with by any country or restricted.
“The Chinese government keeps saying that this is a problem between Russia and Ukraine, it's not a problem between China and the US, and the US should not try to turn it into one,” Ge emphasized.