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US, China talks illustrate hardening divide
Insights from Bloomberg, the Financial Times, and El País
The News
Officials in the U.S. and China will host separate meetings this week with key allies as the gulf between the two countries grows. U.S. President Joe Biden will host the leaders of the Philippines and Japan for talks this week, with the three nations carrying out maritime drills alongside Australia in the South China Sea on Sunday in the face of rising tensions with Beijing.
British Foreign Secretary David Cameron is also expected in Washington for talks about increasing military aid to Ukraine. Meanwhile, Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, has arrived in China for talks on “hot topics,” including cooperation on international affairs.
SIGNALS
US believes China is propping up Russia
Despite Beijing’s assertions that China is neutral in the Russia-Ukraine war, Washington is warning allies that Beijing is providing Moscow geospatial intelligence, a type of surveillance that tracks human activity through satellite imagery. Bloomberg reported that trade between Russia and China has boomed in recent years, reaching $240 billion in 2023, a record. China has provided a crucial lifeline to Russia since Moscow invaded in 2022, offering access to clothes, vehicles, and machinery in the wake of widespread Western sanctions. Chinese support for Russia has expanded, sources that spoke to Bloomberg said, and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken recently called for Western allies to do more to curtail the partnership.
Biden is expected to warn Beijing over escalation in South China Sea
U.S. officials believe that China has underestimated the likelihood of escalation in the South China Sea, and Biden is expected to raise concerns over the Chinese military’s activity towards the Philippine Navy in the area, sources that spoke to the Financial Times said. The U.S. has stopped short of issuing a “red line” about Beijing’s operations, the officials added: “If you give the Chinese a red line, they will go just short of that and do everything but,” one person that spoke to the newspaper said. Meanwhile, Bonnie Glaser, a China expert at the German Marshall Fund, told the FT that if China directly attacked the Philippines “Washington would be compelled to respond,” meaning a “major political crisis between the U.S. and China would ensue, and, at worst, a wider military conflict.”
China and Russia likely see an opportunity to challenge US hegemony
China and Russia already control swaths of Eurasia between them, and their “no-limits” partnership has offered a level of resistance against the U.S. and its allies, historian and former Canadian politician Michael Ignatieff wrote for El País. The partnership threatens stability globally, he argued, and would test the limits of Washington’s defenses: “If they decided to mount an overt challenge to the American order — for example, with a coordinated, simultaneous offensive against Ukraine and Taiwan,” then “the U.S. would struggle to rush weapons and technology into the breach,” he wrote.
