US' moves belie its masquerade of conciliation

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen plans to visit Beijing in early July, according to a Bloomberg report on Tuesday.

If the trip that Yellen has been planning since April materializes, it can be regarded as a positive outcome of US Secretary of State Antony Blinken's two-day visit to Beijing that wrapped up on June 19, during which an agreement was reached between the two sides on re-opening bilateral communication channels. However, it would be premature to say that Blinken's trip has helped check the overall worsening trend of Sino-US relations.

Not only has the US side never stopped its military provocations in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea, even during Blinken's visit to Beijing, but also some unpleasant incidents have happened over the past days, some of them unprecedented.

One day after Blinken said that relations must be handled responsibly, US President Joe Biden smeared his Chinese counterpart at a campaign fundraiser in California on Tuesday last week, an act that the Chinese Foreign Ministry called "an open political provocation".

Shortly after that, Biden hosted Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Washington with the focus on strengthening their coordination to contain China militarily and economically.

On the same day, two Chinese anti-corruption law enforcers taking part in fighting cross-border crime with the US by locating corrupt fugitives and recovering illegal proceeds from the country were accused of "forcibly repatriating Chinese citizens to China".

Despite all these provocations by the Biden administration, Beijing has not stopped communicating with the US side, although with an unprecedentedly low level of trust, in an effort to try and get Washington to recognize that it is its misjudgment on China's rise that is the root cause of the souring relations.

During his meeting with Jacob Lew, chair of the National Committee on US-China Relations, in Beijing on Monday, China's senior diplomat Wang Yi pointed out that the roots of the difficulties facing China-US relations lie in the severe deviation of the US in its position toward China, which has resulted in the implementation of a series of misguided measures. He urged Washington to respect China's legitimate right to development, and fulfill the commitments it has made to Beijing multiple times.

All this indicates the opportunities for improving ties that were created by Blinken's visit risk being wasted. If its sincerity in trying to improve bilateral relations is met with only cheating and insults, Beijing will be left with no choice but to respond to Washington in the same way.