U.S. and China Need to Start Talking Again
However fierce their competition, the increasingly bitter rivals must keep looking for bargains to strike.
Naval encounters could spark a wider conflict.
Photographer: Matt Brown/U.S. Navy/Getty Images
While Chinese leaders have joined others in formally congratulating Joe Biden, they sent the next U.S. president a very different message recently by cracking down on Hong Kong’s elected legislature. It’s obvious there will be no quick détente between the U.S. and China no matter who occupies the White House. That only makes it more important for the two sides to start talking again.
Before the election, President Donald Trump bluntly said of his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, “I have not spoken to him in a while because I don’t want to speak to him.” Instead, in recent months, the administration has launched a series of broadsides — sending more warships into the South China Sea, expanding weapons sales to Taiwan, choking off critical supplies to Chinese technology companies, sanctioning top Chinese officials, and expelling diplomats. It is now threatening more sanctions over the ouster of pro-democracy legislators in Hong Kong, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says the U.S. “is not finished yet.”