US Secretary of State Anthony J. Blinken did his best to mend fences with China. The next day, Joe Biden ruined all the efforts with mortifying remarks that vexed Chinese President Xi Jinping.
merica’s biggest headache in dealing with China and Russia apparently lies not in its mounting debts to creditors and investors, neither in desperate attempts with its NATO allies to overpower Russia through Ukraine, nor in maintaining its leadership of the wrongly defined unipolar world. The nightmare ghosting its reputation seems to be its president, Mr. Joe Biden.
After frustratingly characterizing Russian President Vladimir Putin as “a war criminal” in his diplomatic fusillades that drew likewise retaliation from the Kremlin, Joe Biden has introduced yet another legacy of his diplomacy ―his “dictator Xi Jinping” jibes that have drawn angry reactions from Beijing and Moscow.
Shortly after Secretary of State Anthony J. Blinken had burned the midnight oil and beaten his brains out to mend fences with China during a rapprochement mission to Beijing, Biden triggered the row by stigmatizing Xi Jinping as “dictator” ―a terminology unmistakably understood in Oriental culture as an uncanny disparagement that might have harbingered a move to change China's system of government.
During a fundraising event in California, Mr. Biden also prodded the fundraisers with the narration that Xi Jinping was greatly embarrassed after an alleged Chinese spy balloon was shot down in South Carolina by an F-22 Raptor fighter jet on February 4.
“The reason why Xi Jinping got very upset, in terms of when I shot that balloon down, with two box cars full of spy equipment in it,” Biden said, “was he didn't know it was there. That's a great embarrassment for dictators when they didn't know what happened.”
Reconciliation Endeavors Badly Destroyed
With the benefit of hindsight, such jibes clearly spifflicated all the painstaking efforts that Anthony Blinken had made, and also destructed rigorous efforts by Secretary of Defence Llyod Austin who had fastidiously tried, albeit vainly, to bury the hatchet with his Chinese counterpart Li Shangfu during May 2-3 Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore.
President Xi Jinping, by the way, is perchance not an execrably vagarious and mercurial leader that Mr. Joe Biden probably represents. He did not reply directly to the revilements that have aggravated the Sino-American relations; instead he asked deputy information director of the foreign ministry, Mrs. Mao Ning, to respond.
"The irrelevant remarks by the US side are extreme, absurd, irresponsible, and seriously violate basic facts, diplomatic protocol, and China's political dignity," refuted Mrs. Mao Ning, adding, "They are an open political provocation. China is strongly dissatisfied with and firmly opposed to it."
During Anthony Blinken’s trip to Beijing, Xi Jinping had said that he welcomed attempts to stabilize the Sino-American relations, but insisted that such efforts "should always be based on mutual respect and sincerity" ―part of normal diplomatic ethics that octogenarian Biden forgot to uphold.
In Washington DC, therefore, China’s Ambassador Xie Feng threw his weight behind Mao Ning's rebuttal: "With the latest irresponsible remarks about China's political system and its top leader, people cannot help but question the sincerity of the US side. The Chinese government and people do not accept any political provocation against China's top leader and will resolutely respond," the ambassador warned.
Kremlin Gives Biden Diplomatic Decency Lecture
Those imperious remarks against President Vladimir Putin’s close ally also triggered a spartan response from the Kremlin. Its seasoned spokesman Dmitry Peskov hurled a diplomatic decency lecture at the White House: "These are very contradictory manifestations of US foreign policy, which speak of a large element of unpredictability. However, that's their business. We have our own bad relations with the USA and our very good relations with the PRC."
Kremlin’s ethical lecturing continued with Mr. Peskov advising President Biden that such jibes were an “incomprehensible follow-up to various conciliatory statements" during Blinken's China visit, because in fact Xi Jinping had hailed Blinken's trip as continuation of "common understandings” that Biden and Xi Jinping had reached in Bali Summit during Indonesia’s presidency of the G20.
Immediately after the diplomatic brawl exploded, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen struck a reconciliatory note saying it's "critical" the US and China "work together" on global challenges. But her fence-mending remarks fell short of identifying the roots of the problem.
"With respect to the comments, I think President Biden and I both believe it's critical to maintain communication… to clear up misinterpretations and miscalculations. We need to work together where possible. But we have disagreements, and we are also forthright in recognizing we do have disagreements," she theorized.
Well, Mrs. Yellen, the trigger wasn't a matter of misinterpretations, as you savvied out of context. This is a matter of a foreign head of state hurling plain insults at the head of state of another sovereign nation, and the perceived ignominy is being felt also by over a billion Chinese who are proud of their leader.
No, it’s not at all an issue of misinterpretation on the Chinese side either. It’s an arbitrary exercise of ingrained hauteur yet against the top leader of a sovereign foreign nation ―a clarion evidence that if such a big power as China could be so easily chagrined, it would be much easier to abase smaller and less powerful nations. And I wonder if this is how a fairer equality-based and mutual respect-driven global order should be shaped.
Revise the UN Charter 'To Build the World Anew'
The global South’s desire “to build the world anew” was actually presented in a hard-hitting oratory by Indonesia’s first President Soekarno to the UN General Assembly as early as September 30, 1960 but unfortunately Soekarno's powerful message landed in deaf ears ―and the standing ovation that day ironically annunciated his downfall.
Until the UN Charter is revised and amended to accommodate present day realities ―as reflected in the composition of the G20 where India and Indonesia, just like Brazil, Mexico, and South Africa; as well as Japan, South Korea, and Saudi Arabia are rapidly rising as regional powers― beneficiaries of hegemony will continue to plunder geopolitical fairness, rendering injustice everywhere.
Suddenly I recall that famous Letter from Birmingham, Alabama jail, when on April 16, 1963 Martin Luther King Jr. wrote, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly."
With those inspring words on my fingertips, it is fair to say that the vieux jeu attitude of feeling superior over other nations is incompatible with present-day realisms, as the thriving multipolar world is calling for expansion and perpetuation of interconnectivity, interdependence, and complementarity among nations.
This developing trend can only be durable when moral strength and political propriety replace rinky-dink superbia of material achievements that determine the weight of world leaders’ mindsets and deportments.
If this remains a distant dream, the culprit to be held accountable is the lordliness of political leaders who fallaciously assume that they will forever be the masters to subjugate weaker nations with subtle weaponizing of democracy, human rights, and environmental preservation.
New Zealand’s Intelligent Response to US-China Row
Not surprisingly Biden’s ostensible diplomatic infraction reached Wellington as a rare kind of impropriety that necessitates a high-level response. Prime Minister Chris Hipkins was quick to defend his good relations with Xi Jinping when he said, "The form of government that China has is for the Chinese people... If they wanted to change the form of government, then that would be a matter for them" to decide.
Chris Hipkins revealed New Zealand’s stance on the eve of his June 25-30 trip to Beijing ―bringing along the CEOs of his country’s biggest corporations― during which time he is scheduled to hold talks with President Xi Jinping, Premier Li Qiang, and Chairman of National People’s Congress, Zhao Leji.
Wellington’s attitude toward China is independently different from that of Australia ―which is a member of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QSD) along with India, Japan, and the United States ―and of which relations with China is increasingly turbulent, even though the two southern countries are signatories to the ANZAC Pact and the Five Power Defence Arrangement (FPDA) along with Malaysia, Singapore, and the United Kingdom.
Security alliances apart, Chris Hipkins’ New Zealand is aiming to elevate its good relations with China to the next level ―the reason why it doesn’t want to see the Asian giant being driven at bay by invidia-driven grandiosities of the US president, given that America remains its strongest ANZUS partner.
New Zealand also aims to join the non-nuclear part of the AUKUS alliance which brings together Australia, the UK and the US. But this raises serious concerns in Beijing, because the AUKUS is currently centered on Australia receiving nuclear-powered submarines which Beijing perceives as heralding a potential menace to its naval operations in the South China Sea.
It is, therefore, a normal diplomatic practice for Chris Hipkins to have made those well-balanced remarks in an attempt to tone down the US-China row and focused instead on expanding New Zealand's bilateral economic relations with China.
[*]
Senior journalist Pitan Daslani is Foreign Affairs Expert at the Senate of the Republic of Indonesia.
|
