U.S.-China Ties Heading To The Pits, Analyst Bewails

Two weeks after the virtual summit between Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Joe Biden, many have dismissed the meeting as just a photo opportunity. “Little More Than Polite Words,” read the New York Times headline.

Photo Insert: The virtual meeting between US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping

But in fact, it was a serious effort, months in the making, by both sides to try to halt the dangerous downward spiral toward conflict.

The summit attempted to put a floor on a conflict that threatens to spiral out of control and see if there was enough space for both sides to accept power limits and find room for compromise.

It’s not clear whether that’s possible or whether US and Chinese ambitions are fundamentally incompatible. But it’s a question that needs to be answered, Robert A. Manning, a senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security and its New American Engagement Initiative, stressed in an analysis for Foreign Policy.

US policy toward China is going through the five stages of grief. Washington was too long in the denial stage: Since former US President Barack Obama’s period, it still thought China would reform and become more like the US—or, at least, play by its rules.

Then, with the onset of former US President Donald Trump, Washington entered the anger phase: bipartisan demonization as well as outrage that China played the US to facilitate its rise, with the US then driven to counter it or somehow roll it back.

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