Xi warns Blinken against ‘vicious competition’ between US, China

President Xi Jinping warned America’s top diplomat that the US shouldn’t target or oppose China, as the world’s largest economies wrapped two days of talks spanning thorny disputes on trade and Beijing’s support for Russia’s war machine.

The Chinese leader met with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Beijing on Friday afternoon, as the two superpowers continued dialogue to manage a growing list of differences. While the substance of talks was confrontational, both sides refrained from the sharpest rhetoric. They also announced a new working group on artificial intelligence to start in the coming weeks, bolstering expectations for keeping ties steady.

“China and the United States should be partners rather than rivals,” Xi told Blinken, according to a Chinese Foreign Ministry statement. The two sides should “seek common ground and reserve differences, rather than engage in vicious competition,” he added.

Blinken’s harshest criticisms were reserved for Beijing’s support of Russian aggression in Ukraine. China is the top supplier of military machine tools and a compound used in munitions and rocket propellant, he said. “Russia would struggle to sustain its assault on Ukraine without China’s support,” he added, noting that the US was ready to impose additional sanctions on Chinese firms. 

Since Blinken last visited Beijing 10 months ago at what he called a time of “profound tensions” — after the US shot down an alleged Chinese spy balloon — leaders of both nations have pledged to keep ties on a more secure footing. An American election campaign, in which Beijing is a top target on all sides of the ballot, is now adding fresh volatility to the relationship.

President Joe Biden signed a law that could expel TikTok — owned by China—based ByteDance Ltd. — from the US as Blinken headed to China, days after vowing new tariffs on the Asian nation. The US leader has also imposed a slew of trade curbs to block Beijing’s access to advanced chips citing national security concerns.

Blinken signaled more trade tensions ahead, emphasizing that the issue of Chinese manufacturing overcapacity was now “front and center” of the relationship. “This is a movie that we’ve seen before and we know how it ends — with American businesses shuttered and American jobs lost,” he said. 

China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi accused the US of taking “endless measures to suppress China’s economy,” during five-and-a-half hours of talks with Blinken, which included a working lunch. “This is not fair competition, but containment — and it is not removing risks, but creating risks,” he added, noting while things were broadly stable “negative factors” in the relationship were rising.

Diplomatic visits between the two rivals are becoming “Trojan horses” to emphasize differences, according to Josef Gregory Mahoney, a professor of international relations at Shanghai’s East China Normal University.

“This appears to be what the US has in mind with guardrails,” he added. “It helps stabilize relations and to prevent the sort of dangerous tipping points experienced last year while still marching toward a Cold War paradigm.”

The US is rallying the European Union to forge a common front against China’s industrial policy, with Treasury Chief Janet Yellen warning leaders in Beijing this month that its cheap exports were a concern for the world — a sentiment German Chancellor Olaf Scholz repeated on a trip to the Asian nation days later.

Yellen also raised the prospect of fresh sanctions on Chinese financial institutions that the US says are helping to prop up Russia’s defense industrial base, with the US reportedly already drafting such measures.  

Blinken touted to Xi the progress made on military communication, after both nation’s defense ministers recently held their first call, as well as counter-narcotics cooperation. He also urged Beijing to use its influence to press Iran and limit conflict in Middle East during meetings with Chinese leaders.

Other flashpoints in the relationship such as peace around self-ruled Taiwan, which the Chinese Communist Party considers its territory, and Beijing’s “dangerous” military activity in the South China Sea also featured in talks, according to the US readouts. 

Blinken devoted half of his trip to more relaxed engagements in Shanghai on Thursday. Those included attending a basketball game, eating dinner at a dumpling restaurant, taking a stroll along the colonial-era riverfront and addressing US and Chinese students at a local New York University campus.

Few concrete deliverables were expected from the US diplomat’s trip. But overall it showed the two countries both want to avoid an escalation of conflict, said Allen Carlson, associate professor in Cornell University’s Department of Government.

“They have also tacitly acknowledged that as a result of their ongoing economic interdependence that they also still need each other,” he added. “But beyond such general points there is little that they agree on.”