Things can change a lot in 9 months, particularly when you spend those 9 months trying to kneecap (metaphorically speaking) your adversary after pretending to be “besties”. US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s second trip to #China is so far a total failure with little to no chance of any improvement in the last 2 days.
Just to give you an idea, these were the words used by the US Secretary at the press conference at the end of the previous trip:
- Talks were “direct and substantive” and had brought U.S.-China ties closer to a “surer footing”.
- The two countries aren’t in a “winner-take-all” competition and both sides should manage their rivalry with a fair set of rules.
- “President Biden and I do not see the relationship between the U.S. and China through the frame of great power conflict”.
- “We believe that the world is big enough for both of our countries to thrive.”
And these were the ones used by Chinese Officials in July 2023 after Yellen’s trip:
- “Hope Washington would meet China halfway” – Premier Li
- “China’s development is an opportunity rather than a challenge to the United States and a benefit rather than a risk” – Premier Li
- “The two sides should strengthen communication and seek consensus on important issues in the bilateral economic field through candid, in-depth, and pragmatic exchanges.” – Foreign Ministry
- “We hope the United States will take concrete actions to create a favorable environment for the healthy development of economic and trade relations” – Foreign Ministry
Unfortunately, after the effect of hallucinating mushrooms faded (Janet Yellen inadvertently ate hallucinogenic mushrooms in China – and started a trend), the tone of the dialogue between the US and China dramatically changed, reaching its lowest point on the 15th November 2023 when President Biden called Chairman Xi, at that time visiting the US on the occasion of the APEC summit, “Dictator” (Biden calls Xi a dictator after carefully planned summit).
Beware, Chinese culture is incredibly different from the Western one, something that should be obvious and taken into account by American and European politicians right? For whatever reason I do not understand, maybe in the end because of simple ignorance or arrogance (or a mix of the two), Western politicians tend to repeat the very same type of sloppy mistakes with China. They forget that they are now dealing with the second-largest economy in the world, not an “inferior” developing country that can be easily bent to whatever needs anymore. Furthermore, despite the spectacular growth and development of the past 50 years, a very large amount of people in power still do not understand “China plays chess, not checkers”. In other words, China doesn’t care at all if Mr. X or Ms. Y are running for reelection every 2 or 4 years, China deals with the “institution” representing the country. As such, a great deal of importance is given to long-term relations and commitment to agreements signed even many years back, perhaps in a very different political and economic environment.
How do you expect Chinese authorities to greet Janet Yellen after the US government she is part of spent 9 months doing exactly the opposite of everything that was discussed and agreed before? Not surprisingly with cold shoulders. Janet Yellen’s visit is barely covered in the local media and definitely not given the visibility granted before, furthermore this time you can barely find any trace in Chinese social media about the US Treasury secretary’s presence in China.
This sentence from Chinese PM Li perfectly summarises China’s views and, with the typical calibrated use of a diplomatic tone, throws ice water on all the lies fed by Yellen to the Western media in the past days: “We hope the US could work with China to adhere to the basic market economy norms of fair competition and open cooperation while refraining from politicizing economic and trade issues or overstretching the concept of national security”.
Can you believe this sentence comes from the second highest authority of a “Communist” party and is directed towards what’s (in theory) the most capitalist country in the world? Of course, you hardly find this quote in Western media, but it has not been missed in local Chinese ones. Furthermore, what has not been missed, and no, they have not been “watered down”, were Janet Yellen’s ridiculous economic complaints to China:
- #China’s excessive exports of low-priced goods
- #China’s Industrial “overcapacity” in particular for the production of Solar Panels and EV cars
So let me understand one thing, first, the US and fellow economic allies relocated all their industrial production to China over the decades to access cheap labor force and manufacturing costs. Then now the US is complaining that China exports too many affordable and low-cost goods that are produced in the first place as a consequence of Western countries’ demand. And what does “industrial overcapacity” exactly mean? Should China burn its factories every time there is a downturn in demand for a specific good?
What I truly cannot wrap my head around is that what Janet Yellen is complaining about are actually things that would help alleviate the inflationary pressures in her very home country, but, instead of seeking productive cooperation with China, the US and its allies in Europe are instead imposing taxes and duties to make sure the products being imported from China are not too affordable within their borders. Take a minute to think about this and how twisted it is.
It is very obvious that Chinese authorities have realized how weak the current US administration’s political position is and based on my experience Chinese authorities are already preparing to deal with Trump back at the White House. The use of words like “…refraining from politicizing economic and trade issues or overstretching the concept of national security” sounds more of a warning to Trump than Joe Biden doesn’t it?
To conclude, I see pretty clearly that China is dealing with the current US Government more as a formality than as a relevant interlocutor, and because of that this time Janet Yellen will come back to the US empty-handed without even “promises” even if her PR department is (shamelessly) trying to feed a completely different story to western MSM. At the same time, Chinese authorities are already sending a pretty clear message to the future US government that, considering the words used were the ones used specifically to deal with the Trump administration, they clearly expect to be led again by Donald Trump.