With all eyes watching, the US-China 2+2 meeting in Alaska kicked off with head-on confrontation, heralding more intense confrontation and antagonism in the new relations between the two great powers of the US and China. This new development runs counter to China’s expectation that tension between the two countries would deescalate under the Biden administration. This also suggests a more intense confrontation between the US and China in the Indo-Pacific region. The first island chain in the western Pacific, which goes from the East China Sea, the Taiwan Strait, to the South China Sea, is likely to be the epicenter and tinderbox for future conflicts.

The US and China had said beforehand that they did not expect much from the Alaska meeting. Even observers had predicted that the talks would merely be an occasion for both sides to test each other’s bottom lines, and that it would be more formality than substance. That said, China had indeed expected that it could lay down some basic ground rules as the framework for the building of future relations. As for the US, though it had not expected any outcome from the meeting, it had long resented China’s longstanding tactic of hamstringing the other party by the delineation of so-called consensus and principles during meetings. Therefore, the US had stressed that the meeting must be result-oriented and rejected outright China’s insistence on calling the meeting a “strategic dialogue”. However, no sooner had the meeting started than the US and China began a heated exchange of words, which was unprecedented.

Regardless of whether Beijing was more interested in starting a dialogue than Washington, the Biden administration has indeed stressed that the US government’s policy towards China is based on its alliance and partnership in the Indo-Pacific region, and has repeatedly mentioned its hope to form a consensus on China policies with its European allies. In a statement, the US State Department said that its meeting with China would take place after its meetings with Japan, South Korea and other allies had ended, and the meeting would not be on a comparable level with the 2+2 dialogues with the US’s allies. If the Obama administration adopted the “China before Asia” policy in 2011, then it is apparent that the Biden administration has taken the opposite path of “Indo-Pacific before China”. The “2+2” format of the meeting, with the participation of the Secretary of State and the National Security Advisor, and the US’s statement that the meeting would not be a strategic dialogue but a one-off meeting, further indicate that the format of a “US-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue” adopted in the Obama era has not been chosen by the Biden administration.

More importantly, the Biden administration was aware that the US’s allies were highly concerned about the meeting between the high-level US and Chinese officials. If the US had not addressed issues that the allies are concerned about during the meeting but had simply focused on the bilateral relations between the US and China, the US would have lost its credibility amid its claims that it will strengthen cooperation with its allies in its strategy about China. Therefore, the various allegations that Antony Blinken leveled against China during the meeting were not only a statement of the universal values that the US adheres to, but also addressed to the US’s allies to show that it took their concern very seriously.

Yang Jiechi’s remarks at this point also showed a significant change in China’s attitudes. Though widely believed to be “internal propaganda”, what Yang and Wang Yi said were also targeted at the US’s allies. The two men were trying to demonstrate that China now has the power to give the US a dressing-down, so it is increasingly necessary for the US’s allies to understand the “miserable outcomes of those who ruffle China’s feathers”. The heated exchanges were also addressed to the US’s allies in the Indo-Pacific region.

Furthermore, Yang Jiechi not only began by emphasizing the inability of the US to maintain the status quo, but he also implied that unless China agreed, the US could not have its own way. Yang also openly distinguished between American democracy and Chinese democracy, claiming that China was also a democracy now – it was just different from the US. Yang then accused the Western democratic system of being unable to cope with the pandemic, which was in stark contrast with China’s rapid control of the disease, which Yang said was proof that China’s political system was better than a democratic system. What is meant by “unless China agrees, the US cannot have its own way” is that China has a negative view of the future of the US and is highly confident about its own strength. As for China’s emphasis that it also has a democratic system and its criticism of Western countries’ democratic governance, they reveal Beijing’s elevation of the confrontation between the US and China to the level of political values.

Thus, the squabbles between the US and China in Alaska were not so much a one-time “internal propaganda” exercise as the reflection of the structural factors in the change of US-China relations from competition to antagonism. The US’s policies towards China are not merely about the bilateral relations between the two countries, since Washington also considers the conflicts between China and the US’s allies as a key factor in the formulation of its China policy. By going head-to-head with the US, which was a move uncharacteristic of China, China was demonstrating its excessive confidence after the COVID-19 pandemic, so much so that it even went further to denigrate some Western countries’ capabilities and political systems. This means China has a new estimate of the current balance of power between the East and the West, and has repositioned itself accordingly. It has also directly warned Japan, an ally of the US, not to be “in cahoots (with the US)”. This is tantamount to demanding Tokyo make a choice between the two countries. It can be expected that such conflicts will only keep intensifying in the future.

The pre-meeting estimate that US-China relations would thaw after the Alaska meeting can now be put aside temporarily. What is important is that this confrontation will not merely affect the bilateral relations between the US and China. From different regions to the entire world and from the plurilateral mechanisms for cooperation to multilateral organizations, there will be an intensification of conflicts along the axis of US-China relations. While the past assumption was that US-China relations would swing back and forth between competition and cooperation, this will be only be replaced by increasingly pointed antagonism in the future.

Xi Jinping has repeatedly called for the establishment of a new type of relations between the great powers of the US and China. Since Biden took office, things have so developed that an antagonistic relationship between the two great powers is now supported by both the Republican and Democratic Parties. Xi Jinping himself played a crucial part in this development. The transition from US-confrontation to antagonism also means that the first island chain in the Western Pacific, which goes from the East China Sea, the Taiwan Strait to the South China Sea, has a high chance of conflicts, and the outbreak of conflicts will not often be directly related to cross-strait relations. It is, therefore, necessary for us to develop a new methodology for more accurate estimates about war and peace in the Taiwan Strait.

(Lai I-chung, Executive Committee Member of the Taiwan Thinktank)

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