Why was Blinken’s China visit so underwhelming?

It had been billed as an electrifying encounter – the US Secretary of State preparing to confront Beijing with a catalogue of global misdemeanours, ranging from stepped up support for Russian aggression against Ukraine to the intimidation of ships in the South China Sea belonging to US treaty ally, the Philippines, and the systematic breaking of world trade rules by flooding the market with heavily subsidised electric vehicles (EVs) and other renewable tech.

‘Russia would struggle to sustain its assault on Ukraine without China’s support,’ Antony Blinken said on Friday, at the end of a three-day trip that included meetings with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi and with President Xi Jinping. ‘I made clear that if China does not address this problem, we will.’ He added that while the US ‘seeks to deepen co-operation where our interests align’, it was ‘very clear-eyed about the challenges posed by China’. The Chinese foreign ministry called the US position ‘extremely hypocritical and irresponsible’, though Yi also said, ‘Overall, the China-US relationship is beginning to stabilise’.