![]() China invited US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to visit Beijing this month, and he was scheduled to meet Xi – whose normal practice is to meet only heads of government. US intelligence sources tell me there has been a clear realisation in Beijing that it needs to build bridges. ![]() More significantly, China has been making modest efforts to try to reset relations with the US. We’ve seen that in its attitude to Australia, which has at the very least toned down. So, the spy balloon fiasco has come at a time when the Chinese leadership has realised it’s foreign policy has gone off-piste and that it needs a reset. This has huge implications, not just for day-to-day technological production in China, but for China’s capacity to keep up with the US, Japan and Europe in developing new technologies, particularly in the field of artificial intelligence. In the medium term, this could be a significant problem for China’s economy – although there will be a price to pay in the West for setting up alternative supply chains.Īdd to that producers of high-end chips such as the Dutch firm ASML have implemented a ban on supplies to China, and American allies such as Japan and Taiwan are diverting supplies away from China. Defining itself as a strategic ally of a rogue state like Putin’s Russia is a very uncomfortable place to be.Īdd to that the economy: countries around the world are trying to reduce their dependence on supply chains from China, and clearly this has implications for investment in China and economic growth. Three weeks later, Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine.Ĭhinese Communist Party leaders have always argued that their foreign policy is based on the concept of non-interference in the internal affairs of another country, and Putin’s activities in Ukraine have done nothing but cause China embarrassment. Few will forget the absurd agreement between presidents Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping in February last year that there were “no limits” to their partnership. European powers such as Britain and France are enthusiastically contributing to the US and its allies’ balance of power strategy in the Indo-Pacific. This has led to the evolution of the Quad, AUKUS and, most recently, the decision by Manila to allow US forces to return to the Philippines. The argument that the Indo-Pacific region needs a proper balance of power has strongly resonated not just throughout the region, but throughout the world.Įxtreme expressions of abuse and denigration towards China will, in the end, achieve nothing. It’s arrogance towards its neighbours in the South China Sea, it’s disregard for Hong Kong’s constitution, the extreme wolf-warrior diplomacy, and the mishandling of the COVID-19 issue as well as bellicose threats towards Taiwan have rallied US allies to America’s side. It’s one thing to spy on another country – and all significant countries do a fair bit of that – but it’s another thing to be caught.įor a country which has a reputation for rational if undemocratic governance, China has made an extraordinary catalogue of foreign policy mistakes in recent years. It can also quite easily gather intelligence from agents on the ground in the US.Ī slow-moving surveillance balloon may have some advantages, not least that it can stay over a particular location for a relatively long time compared with a satellite, but the downside risks of using techniques such as surveillance balloons are clear. How could China have imagined the Americans wouldn’t detect a surveillance balloon and not only shoot it down but make it a political and diplomatic issue? APĪfter all, China has the second-largest number of satellites of any country on earth, and clearly uses some of them to monitor locations of interest in the US. ![]() What is the upside for China in taking such a reckless risk? Or, put another way, the incident has aroused huge antipathy towards China in the US and left those who want to promote coexistence looking for somewhere to hide. How could they have imagined the Americans wouldn’t detect a surveillance balloon and not only shoot it down but make a political and diplomatic issue over it? To send surveillance balloons over the United States at a height of 50,000 to 60,000 feet is just silly. Chinese foreign policy seems to lurch from one disaster to another.
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