U.S. analysts say the imminent visit to Beijing by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken does not signal a major change in U.S. relations with the People’s Republic of China.
Blinken will be the first top U.S. diplomat to visit Beijing since 2018.
Meanwhile, officials from the two countries are preparing for another face-to-face meeting between the two leaders this year and a side event during the summit, an unnamed U.S. official told VOA.
But expectations were low that Blinken’s meeting with senior Chinese leaders would yield substantial results or reset tensions between the two countries.
“I don’t think there should be a lot of expectation to see any major breakthroughs from this trip,” said Jude Blanchette, chair of the Freeman China Studies Program at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). )Say.
“I don’t think it’s a bad thing either, given how much the relationship has deteriorated over the past five years,” Blanchett told reporters during a Monday evening teleconference.
This month, Blinken told an audience at the University of Chicago’s School of Political Science that open lines of communication can put up guardrails in U.S.-China relations amid heightened tensions. He added, however, that the heat in the relationship between the two countries had cooled after then-Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in August 2022.
The last time President Biden met with Chinese President Xi Jinping was during the G20 summit in Bali, Indonesia, in November.
India will host this year’s G20 summit in New Delhi on September 9-10. The United States will host this year’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) leaders’ summit in San Francisco in November.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine
February 24 this year marks the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The United States says it has made very clear to China the consequences of providing security and material support for Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Last Thursday, the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned a Chinese company, Changsha Tianyi Institute of Space Science and Technology, also known simply as Spacety China. The Treasury Department has accused the company of providing satellite imagery of Ukraine to support operations by the Kremlin-linked mercenary Wagner Group.
The Luxembourg-based subsidiary of China Tianyi has also been sanctioned.
U.S. officials and China watchers said Russia’s war on Ukraine would be on the agenda during Blinken’s meeting with Chinese officials in Beijing.
“The domestic debate in China about China’s policies toward Russia and Ukraine was one of the most contentious issues I encountered while I was there,” said China Business at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), who spent six weeks in China last fall. And senior economic adviser Scott Kennedy said. “Many in China’s domestic expert community believe China has made a strategic mistake.”
But in public, Chinese officials have stuck to Beijing’s policy positions and narrative.
“The United States is the initiator and the biggest pusher of the Ukraine crisis,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Mao Ning said on Monday.
Visas for Americans to China The
Chinese government has suspended the use of all 10-year multiple-entry visas issued before March 26, 2020, and stopped issuing new visas at that time due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Dennis Wilder, a professor of Asian studies at Georgetown University, said it ran counter to a reciprocal deal China struck with the administration of former President Barack Obama. Wilder was the senior editor of the Daily Brief of the President of the United States from 2009 to 2015.
Wilder told VOA that Blinken may press Chinese officials to lift the suspension of valid visas to China, which affects many Chinese-Americans, as well as business and educational exchanges.
The Chinese government stated that it will continue to adjust measures and facilitate international personnel exchanges according to changes in its epidemic situation.
A spokesman said the Chinese embassy and consulate general in the United States can issue new two-entry visas, valid for Six-month visa. But visas for traveling to China and seeking medical treatment are not covered.
Experts say that while Americans can apply for new Chinese visas, the trove of private information required in visa applications could be used against applicants or to pressure overseas dissidents.
Current Chinese visa applications require the applicant’s spouse, parents (even deceased) and children’s private information, such as their date of birth, country of birth, nationality, address and occupation. The application form also asks whether the applicant’s parents are in China.
In contrast, information on applicant’s family members is optional in the previous 4-page visa form.
Visa applicants born in Taiwan or Hong Kong are also required to provide documents with their original names in Chinese, such as birth certificates.
Chinese authorities are “looking for the “vulnerability”” of Chinese Americans abroad because the information could be used as a tool to pressure applicant families living in China, Wilder said, citing several Chinese-American journalists Examples of leaving mainland China due to such pressure.
“I would be apprehensive about filling in all this information,” Bonny Lin, director of the China Power Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), told VOA.
“It’s not unusual in terms of the overall trend in China to want better control and increased surveillance of all activity within its borders,” she said.
Asked whether such private information provided by U.S. officials traveling to China could be used as a form of political intelligence, Lin agreed.
“Of course they are, because they’re collecting that information for use,” she said.
For Chinese citizens applying for U.S. non-immigrant visas, although applicants are required to provide their family information, the requirements are not broad. In addition, the United States does not require specific and personal information about the visa applicant’s children.
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